The Gate Locks Down Before the Trial

Gravenhurst did not welcome the crowd so much as process it. At the stone gate, QUEST met Len Baphomet, a tiefling Lawful officer in uniform whose patience had already been spent by the city's rising panic. MAINE's trial had turned the gate into a checkpoint. Everyone was being inspected. Everyone was being measured against the possibility that they might be part of the problem. Elmyra, Ash, Vic, and Morgan spoke directly with Len while Hugo and the others remained mixed into the anxious press of bodies nearby. The delay felt procedural, but the procedure itself had become hostile. The city was trying to protect itself through suspicion, and suspicion made the crowd easier to trap. That was the opening Castro needed. Before the invasion began openly, Gravenhurst was already bottlenecked. The Lawful presence slowed movement. The trial drew attention. The crowd had nowhere clean to go. The checkpoint was not the attack. It was the shape the attack would use.