#Chapter 120: Breaking Levies

Amelia The courier stumbled into the council chamber so fast he nearly sprawled across the floor. His breath steamed in the cool air, his palms scraped where he caught himself. “Ridge watch sent this,” he gasped, thrusting a packet toward the table. “Rogues at first light. They hit and vanished, like they were testing us.” Richard took the reports, his captains clustering in tight around the map. The courier fumbled with a second bundle and held it toward me, his voice lower. “Cross-references from field medics, ma’am. They keep their own ledgers.” I broke the wax seal. Numbers and names blurred until one cut through everything. Morrow. A requisition note from the vampire wars, copied in two hands: a convoy redirected to Morrow’s unit, a child transfer marked as pending, recipient unnamed. The ink swam. I had seen the name before, scattered in the Haven archives and in the orphanage ledgers that never balanced. A surname written in margins where no donation arrived. A space whe