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Chapter 104 The Cage Tightens
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2026-06-30 00:16:50The gentle city stops being gentle the way a tide turns, all at once and everywhere. The warm light goes white and flat. The soft doors that opened at a touch lock with a sound like teeth meeting.
And the people, the tame untroubled people who sat in the commons and taught children to read, lift their heads from whatever they were doing and turn, all of them, toward the residential tier, toward me, with the blank unhurried attention of a thing that has been told what to do and feels no
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