Intervention does not arrive with sirens.
It arrives with forms.
⸻
The first alert hits Jason’s maps at 05:12, a thin red outline blooming across a cluster of valleys west of Pinecross. No fanfare. No announcement to the public feeds. Just a quiet designation stamped into the infrastructure layers the Ledger Courts still believe no one else can see.
PROVISIONAL INTERVENTION ZONE — ACTIVE
Jason’s stomach drops.
“They did it,” he says.
Zane is already moving, the heir secure against his chest, half-asleep and warm, one small hand fisted in Zane’s shirt like an anchor.
“Where,” Zane asks.
Jason enlarges the map.
“Grayfen Reach,” he says. “Five towns. Two clinics. One school.”
Zane closes his eyes for half a breath.
Grayfen Reach is not strategic.
It is reachable.
Which makes it
