The first c***k did not come from the Gate.
It came from people.
By midmorning, the southern settlement had become something it had never been before a place of gathering rather than passage. Not a camp. Not a refuge. A witness. Word traveled in careful increments, carried by traders and messengers who repeated what they had seen without embellishment because embellishment wasn’t needed.
Things erased had returned.
Not copies.
Not illusions.
The same stones. The same grain in the wood. The same hairline c***k above the doorway where a child once slammed it too hard.
Aurelia felt the difference immediately.
Attention thickened the air, not as pressure but as presence. Memory layered upon memory, anchoring the place more firmly than any ward could. She stood near the schoolhouse door
