Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-One: "The Investigation Continues and Mitch Finds the Deepest Root Yet"

MITCH --- Life did not pause for the compound to enjoy its own happiness, which Mitch had come to understand as simply the nature of things rather than a cruelty specific to this family. The recruitment structure investigation continued in parallel with every celebration, every quiet domestic evening, every ordinary morning — because the century-old pattern Daven had identified didn't care that the compound had just witnessed its most significant ceremony. He worked through the week following the ceremony with Arden beside him, the two of them cross-referencing the six documented instances of "maintaining balance" against every historical territorial record either of their systems could access. They found the seventh instance on a Wednesday. "Two hundred years old," Arden said, readi