NEVA POV
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The five families went quiet within forty-eight hours of Aldis's acceptance.
Not all at once — in sequence, the way dominos fell when the first one had been the only one actually standing upright. The financial opportunists retracted their approaches to Ashveil's supply chains with the specific language of companies that had discovered a competing interest they preferred not to be adjacent to. The ideological family posted a bland statement in the Territory Digest about *reassessing territorial priorities* that was the political equivalent of backing toward a door while maintaining eye contact. The follow-the-leader family — Casson — sent Holt a brief, formal withdrawal of the investment initiative with a note from Sera Voss that contained nothing but a single sentence:
*T
