The administrative district of Outpost Vester occupied the northern quarter—a cluster of stone buildings that looked more like a small bureaucratic fortress than military infrastructure.
Maps covered every wall. Ledgers filled every desk. Clerks moved between offices with armfuls of paperwork, their faces bearing the particular exhaustion that came not from battle, but from managing those who fought them.
These were the pencil pushers—the same crippled ilk from Grim Hollow, only repainted In unfamiliar hues.
The logistics officers. The supply coordinators. The administrative nobles who'd fled Grim Hollow not because they were cowards—though many soldiers thought so—but because their skills were wasted on a battlefield.
Estovia Armand sat in one of the smaller offices, staring at a requisition form that made no sense.
Request: 200 units standard rations. Approved: 150 units. Reason for reduction: Resource reallocation per Crownhold directive.
