The word arrived on a slate stamped with the Council's seal and the kind of official calm that always meant someone had decided to move a lever. Corrections Unit authorized; pilot deployment to contested border towns; Council oversight panel to monitor. The slate was polite; the implication was not. Procedure had teeth now that could be sharpened into action.
Aria read the message twice before she let it fold back into her palm. The Loom's lamps hummed around her, small moons in a room that had learned to keep secrets and to make them accountable. Thorne stood at the bench, hands ink‑stained, and looked up when she spoke. Keeper Sera closed a ledger and met Aria's eyes with the patient gravity of someone who had watched law become a weapon before.
"They call it a stabilization corps," Thorne said. "A corrections unit to enforce the moratorium and to 'secure' seams. In practice, that means mobile teams with correction tools and procedural authority."
Aria's mouth went dry. She had expected the Council to act; she had not expected them to hand enforcement to a unit whose mandate could be read as permission to intervene without consent. The ledger had been exposed; the Council had reacted. Now the reaction had a uniform.
"Who commands them?" she asked.
"The Council's oversight panel," Sera answered. "But the pilot is being run by a coalition of Alphas and a handful of Order officers. They'll be given authority to enter towns under the moratorium and to apply correction protocols where they judge a risk."
Marcus, who had been listening from the doorway, let out a sound that was half a curse. "Correction without consent is a correction without ethics. We've seen what silencer threads and field grafts do. A unit with legal cover and correction tools could become a machine for erasure."
Aria felt the ledger's map shift under her hands. The facilitator had been a hinge; the corrections unit was a lever. The committee's secrecy had been broken, but the Council's answer risked trading covert trials for overt enforcement. The moral calculus had changed from hidden harm to sanctioned intervention.
They moved fast. The Loom convened a council of its own: Remnants witnesses, Thorne's technical notes, a small delegation from the guild who had agreed to testify, and a magistrate from a neutral town who had seen the first signs of a seam. Aria framed the problem plainly: the Corrections Unit could be used to protect towns, or it could be used to impose a version of stability that erased dissent and memory under the guise of safety.
"We don't oppose stabilization," she said. "We oppose enforcement without consent and without witnesses. We will not let procedure become a cover for correction that looks like mercy but acts like erasure."
Keeper Sera tapped a slate. "We demand three things before any Corrections Unit operates in a neutral town under Remnants oversight: Remnants witnesses present; notarized chain of custody for any artifacts removed; and a public record of interventions. No private corrections. No sealed operations."
The petition they drafted was surgical: a legal frame that turned enforcement into accountable action. It asked the Council to require Remnants presence for any Corrections Unit deployment in neutral towns, to mandate immediate public reporting of any corrective measures taken, and to prohibit the use of silencer threads or memory‑grafting tools without unanimous Remnants approval. It was a petition that would make enforcement visible and therefore harder to abuse.
They sent runners to Highbridge and to the oversight panel with the petition and a sealed packet of evidence: the facilitator's ledger, the guild manifests, and Thorne's technical appendix (principle only). The Loom's courier moved like a shadow through the city, and Aria felt the small, stubborn comfort of doing the right legal thing. But comfort was thin. The Council could accept the petition, ignore it, or twist it into a new procedure that still left towns vulnerable.
The first test came faster than anyone wanted. A Corrections Unit arrived at a border town two days later—an official convoy with banners and a mandate. They called themselves the Stabilization Corps and wore uniforms that made them look like a promise. Their leader, a stern woman with a clipped voice and a badge that read Order Liaison, presented the Council's authorization and a list of "high‑risk nodes" to the magistrate. The town's magistrate, frightened and practical, signed the temporary access order. The Loom's runners had not reached him in time.
Aria and Marcus rode the next dawn. They found the town ringed with polite soldiers and a small, clinical tent where the Corps had set up a "correction station." The people gathered at the square watched with a mixture of relief and fear. Some hoped the Corps would stop the strange memory bleed that had been plaguing the market; others feared what correction might mean.
The Corps worked quickly and with a bureaucratic efficiency that made Aria's skin prickle. They set up detectors and ran a short, public stabilization ritual—anchors and a cadence taught in a way that looked like a demonstration. Then, under the pretext of a "deeper diagnostic," they asked to remove a sigil‑forged device found near the bell tower. The magistrate consented; the Remnants witness had not yet arrived.
Aria stepped forward. "You cannot remove artifacts without a Remnants witness and a notarized chain of custody," she said, voice steady. The Corps' liaison smiled with the practiced calm of someone who had been trained to make refusal look like obstruction. "Council authorization allows us to act in the public interest," she replied. "We are preventing further harm."
"Prevention with no witness is a recipe for erasure," Aria said. "We will not let procedure be used to hide removal. If you insist on taking the device, we will record the transfer, and the Remnants will be present. No sealed custody."
The liaison's smile thinned. For a moment the square felt like a courtroom. The magistrate, who had signed the order in fear, looked between the two women and then at the crowd. He hesitated—then, under pressure from merchants who feared embargoes if they resisted, he allowed the Corps to proceed without Remnants present.
They took the device. They left a receipt. They promised a public report. The Loom's runners arrived an hour later with a Remnants witness who could only record the aftermath. The device was gone.
Aria felt the ledger's teeth close in a new way: the Council's enforcement had a legal face, but law without witnesses could still be used to erase. The petition they had sent to Highbridge now felt like a plea shouted into a hall of procedure.
They did not respond with spectacle. They responded with the work they knew best. Thorne cataloged the town's remaining nodes and taught magistrates a rapid diffusion module that could be deployed in a single breath—an improvisational chorus that scattered attention and made it harder for a device to anchor. Keeper Sera prepared a notarized packet that recorded the Corps' removal and the magistrate's consent. Marcus organized discreet patrols to monitor private docks and courier routes for any sign of the device leaving the region.
At night, Aria sat with the magistrate in the quiet of his office. He was a small, tired man who had signed a paper he thought would protect his people. "We thought the Council would save us," he said. "We didn't know saving could look like taking."
Aria did not offer platitudes. She offered a plan: documented interventions, rapid diffusion training, and a public record that would make future removals harder to hide. "We will keep teaching," she said. "We will keep witnesses ready. We will make procedure accountable."
The Loom's petition reached the oversight panel two days later. The Council's response was a compromise: Remnants witnesses would be required for future Corrections Unit deployments in neutral towns, but the Council reserved the right to authorize emergency removals when a magistrate judged immediate action necessary. The clause read like a safety valve and a loophole in the same breath.
Aria read the Council's reply and felt the ledger's map shift again. They had won a legal foothold—Remnants presence was now a formal requirement—but the emergency clause left room for the very abuses they feared. The Corrections Unit had been authorized; the question now was how to keep it accountable.
She closed the Spiral Log and wrote the day's entry with hands that did not tremble. Corrections Unit pilot deployed; first removal executed without Remnants witness; petition partially accepted—Remnants witness required except in magistrate‑declared emergencies; prepare rapid diffusion modules; increase covert, documented support network for magistrates.
Outside, the town's market resumed its cautious rhythm. The Corps' tents still stood at the edge of the square, a visible reminder that law could be both shield and blade. Inside the Loom, they redoubled the work that made accountability possible: witness packets, diffusion training, and a quiet network of documented aid that could be presented later as evidence if procedure bent toward erasure.
The Corrections Unit had arrived with the Council's blessing. The Loom would make sure that blessing did not become a blank check.