Children remember differently than adults.
They do not archive.
They imprint.
⸻
The first drawing appears on a school wall in Northfield three days after the lunches return.
It is crude. Wax and chalk. A long table. Small figures seated along it. Empty plates drawn in sharp, angry circles. Above them, a scale hangs in the air, tilting so far to one side it nearly falls off the page.
Someone has written beneath it in uneven letters:
WE WERE GOOD.
The headmaster orders it scrubbed before noon.
It is already too late.
⸻
Jason sees the image through a teacher’s private channel and feels something inside him go cold.
“They’re documenting,” he says quietly.
Zane looks up from the floor where he’s sitting with the heir, patiently stacking blocks only to have them knocked over again w
