“Order is brittle. Chaos is honest. And I am very good at making honesty lethal.”
“You mistake me for a monster because you can see my claws. The real danger is that you never noticed the hand guiding yours.”
“Disorder is inefficient. Fear is educational. Obedience is permanent.”
“Resistance is inefficient. Pain, however, is remarkably persuasive.”
“Wars are not won by blades or blood. They are won by clauses… and by knowing which ones you’ll never read.”
A deceptively quiet wetland pocket: a murky, reed-ringed pond surrounded by worn footpaths and low stone outcrops, the kind of place that looks like nothing more than a hunter’s rest stop or an old animal wallow.
A drowned basin where the water turns deep green-black and the surface never sits still.
A slow-moving river train of flat-bottomed craft lashed side-by-side, their decks crowded with grain sacks, coils of rope, and the battered tools of working hands.
A drowned forest cut where the water turns ink-black and the shoreline collapses into slick mud and exposed roots.
The Collapsed Channel Crossing is what’s left of a once-reliable trade cut-through
“If it leaves tracks, it can be learned. If it can be learned, it can be killed.”
“When the water stills, it is already too late.”