CHAPTER 47: THE SHADOW AT THE EDGE
The first weeks of the new council unfolded like nothing we had ever known. Representatives gathered every few days in the main hall, sitting around tables pushed together in a great circle, no head, no foot, no place set apart. They argued over grazing rights, over new trails, over how to share grain when harvests were thin — and for the first time, no one settled disputes with threats or hidden files or old claims pulled from locked boxes. They settled them with words, with trade‑offs, with the Charter laid open between them whenever voices grew sharp.
Yet even as the valley bloomed with new life, a thin thread of unease ran through our days. Riders reported strange sightings along t
