CHAPTER 99
Author: JAXON STEELE
last update2025-11-07 05:41:50

THE QUIET COUNTERSTRIKE

They learned quickly that the ledger did not always answer in noise. Sometimes it hit like weather you didn’t feel until the gutters overflowed. After the Day of Names, the city settled into a brittle hush — a silence that was not peace but the moment when a storm tests the will of the shore. Adrian felt it like a pressure behind his eyes: something coming he could not quite see, only sense.

The next morning the papers printed variations on the same theme: verification primers in three columns and, below them, opinion pieces that smelled faintly of fear. Martel’s name had gone out like a flare, and his offices had gone still as a tomb. His spokesmen released statements full of shocked indignation and rhetorical questions about “fair process.” Trustees hired teams of lawyers with the speed of ritual. The ledger favored delay the way a patient hunter favors stealth.

Claire worked through the motions with the same merciless economy she used on court days: subpoena
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