Year 320 AF
Grand Ordinator Harven Brightforge signed his last document on an Ironday.
It was a grain allocation amendment — seventeen words, three signatures required, none of them important. He signed it with the same pen he'd used for thirty-two years, the same hand that had approved the printing press and negotiated with the Korthane Hegemony and sent Gorrah Ironblood south to fight in tunnels he would never see. The pen didn't know the difference between a grain amendment and a history-defining treaty. Neither did the wrist, anymore.
He was seventy-four. His eyes had been failing for two years — the letters on the page weren't blurring yet, but the edges had softened in a way that an administrator who read sixty documents a day could not afford to pretend was stable. His hands were steady. His mind was sharp. His body was sending him the same message Elara's had sent her, twelve years before he'd understood it: the office will outlive you, and the office must not wait.
