The first name vanished without warning.
No alarm.
Nobody.
No message carved into stone.
Just absence.
Lyra noticed it before anyone reported it, because she was looking for gaps, not events.
The morning supply ledger arrived incomplete. One approval line was missing its counterseal. Usually, that would have triggered a minor correction request. Instead, the clerk had left it blank, hand shaking just enough to smear the ink.
Lyra didn’t ask why.
She already knew.
She walked the eastern corridor herself, steps unhurried, posture deliberately careless. Wolves bowed out of habit, then caught themselves and straightened, unsure whether the gesture still mattered.
She let that uncertainty live.
At the end of the corridor, the facilitator’s office stood open.
Too open.
The desk was
