The system had been unreliable for thirty-one hours when I nearly walked into the worst mistake of my life.
It was not a dramatic near-miss. It did not announce itself as the kind of moment that would later be described as a turning point. It began, as most serious mistakes begin, with a small thing that looked entirely reasonable from the inside.
The invitation had come from Lord Harren Vale's household steward, delivered through the standard estate correspondence channel, politely worded, apparently routine. A joint landholders' consultation was being convened in the western meeting hall, a gathering of the principal titleholders whose estates shared the northern trade route corridor. Given the disruptions of the past weeks, the invitation read, Lord Harren had taken the initiative to organize an informal discussion between affected parties to collectively address the matter with the relevant administrative offices.
