Legitimacy is the last territory authority believes cannot be contested.
Because if it controls what counts, it controls everything that follows.
⸻
The declaration arrives without warning.
Not broadcast.
Not debated.
Stamped into the infrastructure the Ministry still owns and pushed outward like a tide that expects shorelines to obey.
ONLY REGISTERED ENTITIES ARE LEGITIMATE.
ALL UNREGISTERED OPERATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO INVALIDATION.
Jason reads it once.
Then again.
Then closes his eyes.
“They didn’t ban anything,” he says quietly. “They erased it.”
Zane stands at the gate, the heir awake and alert against his chest, watching people pass with baskets, tools, folded notes. The child senses the shift like a change in weather, curious but not afraid.
“They’re claiming reality,” Zan
