Six dead in three weeks. The county is recording them as animal attacks. They are not animal attacks.

I reached Mercy Ridge after dark. A small town folded into a valley the maps barely bother with, and it does not want the Vigil here. A pack is running the ridgeline above it. One resident is unaccounted for. The rest is below, and the file is thin.

Preliminary Observations

• Six fatalities, three weeks, one jurisdiction
• Local authority attributing the deaths to wildlife
• One resident missing — a minor, seventeen
• A pack established in the hills above the valley
• The evidence does not fit the pack — ████████████

Assessment withheld pending Warden review.

The assignment did not close the way it was written.