The night after the decree I did not sleep.
Fires burned lower across the territory, not from lack of fuel but restraint, as though even flame had learned caution. Wolves moved quietly between quarters, avoiding eye contact, voices kept low not out of secrecy but uncertainty.
Order still existed.
Authority did not.
Aurelia stood at the eastern overlook long after the moon rose, the land stretching wide and tense beneath her. The marker pulsed steadily at the boundary, unchanged by the council's decree, indifferent to the fractures it had helped expose.
It had not come to negotiate.
It had come to remember.
"They've begun leaving," Mira said softly, joining her.
Aurelia did not turn. "Who?"
"Neutrals," Mira replied. "Those who won't choose a side. They're pulling back from shared routes. Declining contact."
Aurelia exhaled slowly. "Isolation without exile."
"Yes."
"That's how it spreads," Aurelia murmured. "Quietly."
