The shift came without announcement.
Phillip noticed it first in the mornings. Not in the sounder—its rhythm remained steady—but in the way people arrived. They came earlier without being told. They came prepared without asking whether they should. Coats hung where they belonged. Tools were laid out before instructions reached mouths.
It was not discipline.
It was confidence.
The morning Phillip realized this, frost still rimmed the yard. The air bit sharply, the kind that stung lungs on the first breath and then settled into tolerable cold. He stepped outside before sunrise, boots crunching over frozen ground, and stopped near the wire shed.
A small group of apprentices stood there already.
They were not waiting for him.
One held a ledger. Another checked a tension gauge. A third adjusted a brace at the base of a pole, tapping it twice with a mallet, listening to the sound rather than watching his hands.
Phillip stayed where he was and watched.
