The barriers went up before dawn.
Not walls.
Not fortifications.
Wooden partitions bolted into stone sockets that had always been there, waiting for a purpose.
Three lanes now fed the grain booth instead of one corridor. Each marked with charcoal symbols for district. Each narrow enough to prevent clustering.
The square looked cleaner.
It felt smaller.
Kael arrived early again.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the new partition, testing the width.
“Two bodies at a time,” he murmured. “No lateral surge.”
A clerk overheard him. “That’s the point.”
He nodded.
Of course it was.
Lyria stood near the central lane, watching the enforcers adjust to the new structure. They didn’t have to create space anymore. The wood did it for them.
She felt unnecessary.
That unsettled her more than steel had.
Garron tapped the partition once with his iron knuckles.
“Temporary,” he said.
Maera arched a brow. “Everything is temporary.”
“Wood rots.”
“So do habits,” she replied.
The first Low Weave group entered their marked lane.
Iri walked near the front.
The boy stayed close behind her, eyes tracking the wood as if it might move.
“It looks safer,” he whispered.
“It looks managed,” Iri said.
At the head of the lane, a clerk scanned the posted list.
“Registered dependent confirmed,” she said, marking the symbol beside the boy’s name again.
Provisional compliance.
The word felt colder today.
Behind them, Old Stone’s lane moved faster. Their list was shorter. Their household counts cleaner.
Kael noticed.
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He stepped back from the booth and watched the distribution pace by district.
Low Weave: slower, more verification marks, more exceptions.
Old Stone: smooth.
He took out a scrap of parchment and began tallying the intervals between households.
Lyria saw him writing.
“You’re turning this into numbers again,” she said.
“It already is,” he replied.
“It’s people.”
“It’s both.”
She wanted to argue.
But the foreman’s blood still stained the fountain seam, faint but visible if you knew where to look.
Above, Soryn watched the square divide into lanes.
“No surge,” the Watch Captain reported. “No clustering.”
“Incident risk?” she asked.
“Reduced.”
She nodded slowly.
“Then formalize it.”
The Captain blinked. “Formalize?”
“Make the partitions permanent fixtures. Budget request to Council.”
“That’s not temporary.”
Soryn’s gaze remained on the lanes.
“It is until it isn’t,” she said.
The scribe paused mid-writing.
She noticed.
“Add review clause,” she said. “Three-month evaluation.”
The scribe wrote it down.
Below, tension did not vanish.
It condensed.
A man in Old Stone’s lane leaned over the partition.
“You get more inspection because you cause more trouble,” he called toward Low Weave.
The boy stiffened.
Iri kept her eyes forward.
Lyria stepped toward the man.
“Stay in your lane,” she said evenly.
He scoffed but complied.
The partition had done most of the work.
By midday, distribution ended without raised steel.
The ledger added three new annotations:
Partition Installation — Pending Council Approval
Labor Supplement — Active
Low Weave Review — Extended
Kael stared at the list of measures growing longer.
“You’re building layers,” he said quietly to the clerk.
“We’re responding,” she answered.
“Layers remain.”
She didn’t respond to that.
In Low Weave, patrol lanterns appeared earlier than before.
Not because violence had occurred.
Because structure had expanded.
The boy stood at the doorway again.
“Will the wood stay?” he asked Iri.
“For now.”
“Like the curfew?”
“Yes.”
He thought about that.
“For now is longer than I thought,” he said.
Iri did not correct him.
That night, Kael redrew the distribution map again.
He added another branch:
If district risk elevated → physical separation maintained.
He did not label it permanent.
He didn’t need to.
The city had learned something after the foreman fell.
Not that hunger was dangerous.
That proximity was.
And so proximity was reduced.
Quietly.
