Nothing collapsed at once, because true collapses are rarely loud at first, they announce themselves through minimal displacements, decisions made too early or too late, impulses escaping calculation, and silences that stop protecting. At that phase of the game, everything still seemed functional, but only because no one had pulled the last gear, and Luara felt this with almost physical clarity, as if the entire territory were suspended in an unstable state, about to give in under its own ...