The document had been written in four hands, amended by three, and signed by one.
Evren placed it on Cardinal Hollin's desk at the sixth bell of Highmark's third Crestday, a date he'd verified against the Legal Corps calendar, the Crucible's internal scheduling ledger, and the correction he'd filed nineteen days ago when he'd discovered the forty-day window error in his original Phase 3 submission. The correction had been absorbed by the staffing change exactly as the institutional process predicted. The process worked. It always worked, if you let it.
The document was sixty-one pages. He'd bound it himself. Hand-stitched, cover stock from the Crucible's printing office, spine labelled in his own lettering: Doctrinal Review: Phase 3, Institutional Alignment with Civic Framework, Final. The binding was tight. No loose pages. He'd checked twice.
