Chapter 107

Aria's POV

Writing was different from building.

I hadn't anticipated how different. Building moved outward — each decision creating the next, the structure growing visible and testable, problems identifiable by their effects. Writing moved inward first. You had to descend into the thing before you could bring any of it back up in a form someone else could hold.

I started three times in August and discarded each attempt.

Not because they were wrong exactly. Because they were performing. The first attempt began with the alliance's founding and read like a history, which wasn't what I was trying to write. The second began with the Eastern school closure,...