THE DEAD WHO AREN'T
The death record was a work of art.
Damon sat in the archive room, Felix's discovery spread before him, and studied the documentation that had erased Corvin Vale from the living world.
The accident report was thorough, detailed, professionally constructed—the kind of bureaucratic perfection that only revealed itself as fiction when you knew to look for seams.
Border incident. Eastern perimeter, disputed territory with Thornwall. Three witnesses, all Crescent pack wolves, all since deceased or disappeared. Body unrecoverable due to terrain, presumed destroyed. Closure signed by Garrett Crescent himself, then merely Alpha, not yet the tyrant he would become.
Ten years ago. The same year Maren arrived at Nightshade. The same year the second communications thread began its patient transmission. The same year everything changed, though no one had known it at the time.
