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Chapter 47 - Arca (And The War Beneath The Grain)

ARCA - SOUTHERN BORDER - DAY THREE OF DIPLOMATIC MISSION

I expected angry farmers.

I expected tax disputes, assembly deadlock, trade complaints, and maybe one ceremonial regent with delusions of historical relevance.

I did **not** expect the entire kingdom to feel like a funeral dressed as a government.

The moment we crossed into Arca, I felt it.

Not through wild, uncontrolled world-consciousness like before. I had better control now. Better boundaries. But the emotional weather of places still pressed against me if I let it.

And Arca was drowning.

Grief. Pride. Humiliation. Hunger. Fear.

Not literal hunger—not yet—but the kind that lived in people who were never sure whether winter would be survivable.

I reined in my horse and looked across the valley.

Fields. Dry.

Storehouses. Guarded.

Villages. Quiet in the wrong way.

Shadow materialized from nowhere beside my horse, making the guard captain flinch hard enough to nearly fall off his mount.

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