The muster ground still carried the convoy's scars when Vasa laid the two records flat across the relay board. He set the raw System measurements beside the Hall's certification layer and traced the seam between them.
"I ran the rector's numbers against the System's own count, and he is not inflating a single figure on your commanders," Vasa said, holding the two layers apart. "He measures the same levels the System measures, then withholds the context that makes them legal, so the fraud is not in the number but in the paper wrapped around it."
"Then he is selling recognition, not power, and that is worse for me than an invented figure I could break by nightfall," Nox said, marking the seam Vasa had opened. "A forged number dies the moment a camera counts it, but a withheld context keeps the level true and lies only about what that level is allowed to buy."
