The second great deployment went out at dawn, and for two hours it went well, which the whole family would later agree had been the trap.
Later, at the treatment tables, they would itemize the trap's parts. The smooth reports, the rehearsed rhythm, the comfortable illusion that the enemy beneath the seam was a spectator rather than a student.
Three Rings went north, three Rings went to the river, the same honest arithmetic as before.
The north body braced the reopened rift beside Loccy, equipped with one of Ferra's fresh dozen spears.
The river body held the degrading heart tempo in the chamber water, three Rings deep.
The link between fronts carried Loccy's reports on schedule, plus the morning settled into the grim comfortable rhythm of work that is going according to plan.
Two hours of that rhythm is exactly long enough for everyone watching to forget that plans are predictions made by hopeful people.
Then the link carried something that was very much not Loccy.
