Fear moves faster than truth.
It always has. It spreads on breath and assumption, filling the gaps before anyone can stop it. It starts in fragments. A patrol returning early without explanation. A runner sent at dawn instead of dusk, face pale and tight. Voices dropping when I enter a room, then lifting too quickly, too brightly, like nothing is wrong and everything is fine and no one is afraid at all.
By midday, the northern wards are all anyone can talk about.
Not in meetings. In hallways. In the spaces between words. In glances that linger and then slide away. The wards did not shatter. They did not burn out or collapse inward the way wards do when they are forced. They softened. Bent. Responded in ways no one has language for. Patrols report the same thing again and again, voices t
