---
By late afternoon, Iron House had tried four small cuts. A supplier freight line. A rumor thread. A worker-contact approach. And one petty attempt to have a kitchen-side carrier delayed through family leverage. Three failed completely. The fourth only partly succeeded, and the loss was covered before evening. Dawn House did not celebrate any of it. That was one of the reasons it kept winning. People who celebrated too early often taught the enemy where their nerves were still soft.
The next morning, the rumor they chose moved early.
It did not come through noble channels. That would have made it too easy to challenge. It came the way dirty rumors always came. Through labor mouths, market pause, and the kind of false certainty poor men borrowed when they wanted their fear to sound like knowledge.
Dawn House had gone bankrupt.
That was the line.
They could not pay.
That was the second line.
