Outside the Chain

An authenticated message should settle a question. This one opens another.

Suspended from her role as Peshcey’s Gatekeeper, Stacia faces evidence that Western records have traveled outside the routes meant to verify them. The warning is genuine. Where the information began—and whose account can be trusted—remains uncertain.

With Trayvor, Zeya, Raleth, and Ayden, she travels east to follow the records through the Keeper network. Peshcey wants answers. The Keepers have procedures. Neither guarantees that the people asking questions will be told the whole truth.

Each relay brings another account to examine, another gap between what was recorded and what someone witnessed. Far away, events at Graymere have entered the same troubled record.

Stacia knows the system well enough to follow its rules. Now she must decide what to do when the evidence leads outside them.