Merrit remembered the prayer runner's face after the halfway bell.
Merrit remembering slowly made the testimony stronger, not weaker.
A rehearsed memory arrived clean. Too clean, sometimes. This came in pieces: robe, mark, fear, timing. The kind of memory a child carried because terror had not cared about order when it entered him.
Piety wanted uncertainty to become erasure.
Ren's system made uncertainty a place to stand until proof arrived.
That timing was not accidental.
Nothing in the Territorial Ethics Simulation was accidental anymore. Not the false mercy tally. Not the hidden route beneath Gold. Not the archive bell swallowing attention from behind a sealed door. Not the public line that had named Seraphina's assassination-risk pattern in front of every faction with ambition and a working memory.
Merrit sat on a low chapel cot with his bandaged arm against his chest and gray twine still visible beneath the cloth.
Seraphina crouched in front of him.
