The two council members Darius trusted were named Farrow and Sable.
He had known both of them for more than a decade — the specific knowing of people who have been in territorial governance together long enough that their function patterns are legible to each other. He called them at eleven-thirty at night with the direct line that Cole maintained for exactly this kind of necessity.
Farrow answered on the second ring.
Sable on the first.
He told them what he had. The recording. Callum's account. The framework gaps. The administrator. Praxis Vael's council position as the ideology's new structural home.
He was on the phone for forty minutes.
I sat in the study during the calls — not listening to the content, feeling the bond's quality as Darius worked through the architecture of what
