Roxie's POV
We took the writ into the command room, and Katya bent over it the way a doctor bends over a wound.
For a long time she did not speak. She read each line. She held the page up to the light. She traced the five black sigils at the bottom with one careful fingertip, and when she finally looked up, the color was gone from her face.
"It's real," she said. "Every word of it. Every seal. The Five Sigils of binding are old law, Roxie. Older than the council itself. They cannot be undone, and they cannot be ignored." Her finger tapped the writ. "If you do not stand in front of those judges by the moonrise of the council vote, this becomes a lawful execution order. Not an attack. Not a war. An *order*. Every pack on the continent will be told they are required to march on Ironfang a
