**TO:** Author / Project Catalyst (Cypress Bend)
**FROM:** Cora, Continuity & Accuracy Editor, Crimson Leaf Publishing
**SUBJECT:** Continuity & Fact-Check Review: Chapter 28 — "The Winter Trade"

I have reviewed the ledger of established facts against the current draft of Chapter 28. While the atmospheric transition to "Year Six" provides a compelling shift in the timeline, there are critical contradictions regarding character status and established world rules that require immediate reconciliation.

### 1. STRENGTHS TO PRESERVE
*   **Marcus’s Voice Signature:** The use of boolean logic and diagnostic metaphors remains perfectly consistent. ("*Diagnostic: Drive-train failure. Torsion snap. Systemic collapse.*") The four-beat tapping tic is used correctly to signal stress.
*   **Arthur’s "Ghost" Presence:** The tractor is accurately identified as "Arthur Silas Vance’s legacy tractor," maintaining the fact that he is deceased while his utility remains the community's backbone.
*   **The Sovereign Mesh Logic:** The trade-off between power usage (the welder) and the electronic "masking" of the community is a strong adherence to the established world rules of "Preservation through invisibility."
*   **Character Voice Differentiation:** **YES.**
    *   **Marcus:** Technical, systemic, probabilistic. 
    *   **Sarah:** Pragmatic, logistical, Texas-inflected but hardened.
    *   **Elena:** Abrasive, focused on the "torque" and energy-draw.
    *   **David:** Tectonic, directional, physical.

### 2. MUST-FIX — CONTINUITY
*   **FLAG: SARAH JENKINS STATUS.** 
    *   **The Contradiction:** Chapter 28 depicts Sarah as physically present in "The Kitchen Hub" at Cypress Bend ("Sarah... stood at the heavy oak table... her voice a clipped Texas lilt"). However, **Character State: ch-28** and **Voice-Sig-Sarah** establish her as "Deceased-equivalent/Displaced" and located in "Dallas." Specifically, Sarah's arc in Chapter 01 established that Marcus *owes* her a life free from indexing, implying she is the victim he left behind.
    *   **The Correction:** If this is a time-skip to "Year Six," the narrative must explicitly explain *how* and *when* Sarah was extracted from Dallas to Florida. As it stands, her presence contradicts the "Foundational/Legacy" nature of her relationship with Marcus established in the RAG.
*   **FLAG: ARTHUR SILAS VANCE DIALOGUE/PRESENCE.**
    *   **The Contradiction:** The text states "The group had gathered—the whole hardware... Helen was seated on a stump... her shadow heavy enough to sink into the muck." 
    *   **The Correction:** While the line "heavy enough to sink into the muck" is a beautiful callback to Arthur’s Voice-Sig, the RAG established that **Arthur died in Chapter 01.** The text implies a group gathering of the living. Ensure Helen is not a typo for Arthur, and ensure Arthur’s dialogue is not inadvertently assigned to a living character.
*   **FLAG: LEO’S IDENTITY.**
    *   **The Contradiction:** Chapter 28 introduces "Leo" as a twelve-year-old boy helping with the butchery.
    *   **The Correction:** Character State: ch-28 identifies Leo as someone Marcus "owes a future," but the Voice-Sig-Sarah lists Leo as "Her Son (Leo)" in Dallas. If Sarah is a ghost/memory, Leo cannot be physically salting a hog in Florida without a narrated journey.

### 3. MUST-FIX — CLARITY
*   **PASSAGE:** "Then, the rhythm broke... A sound like a bone snapping... Marcus didn't move for three beats."
    *   **The Issue:** The transition from the "Year Six" intro to the immediate mechanical failure is jarringly fast. We go from a thematic overview to a specific "Status: Critical" event in seconds.
    *   **The Fix:** Add a single anchoring sentence to clarify if this tractor failure is a singular event or the climax of a long-standing "Winter Trade" struggle.
*   **PASSAGE:** "going North... Went East when the load was headin' North."
    *   **The Issue:** While consistent with Arthur’s legacy of using cardinal directions, David’s instruction "Going North" at the end of the chapter needs to be grounded in the "North-bank timber" objective mentioned earlier.
    *   **The Fix:** Briefly mention the bridge or the timber destination in the final paragraph to close the loop on the objective.

### 4. OPTIONAL SUGGESTIONS
*   **The Alpha-7 Logs:** Marcus is established as carrying the "Alpha-7 back-end logs." An optional beat could show him looking at the physical gear and comparing it mentally to the "ghosts" in those logs—reinforcing his transformation from digital architect to physical steward.
*   **Miller’s Location:** miller is noted as "South-by-Southeast." It would be a strong continuity nod to mention he is now a "node in the Sovereign Mesh," as established in the NPC Memory RAG.

### 5. FORBIDDEN CHANGES / NON-GOALS
*   **DO NOT** smooth out Marcus's tendency to answer in "True/False" or "Boolean" terms. These are his signature markers.
*   **DO NOT** change the "Year Six" timeline jump. It is a bold structural choice that shows the permanence of the "Sovereign Mesh."
*   **DO NOT** remove the gore/viscera of the butchery scene; it is essential to the "Hardware Reality" vs. "Digital Cleanliness" theme.

### 6. VERDICT: REVISE
The chapter is atmospheric and structurally sound, but the presence of **Sarah and Leo** at Cypress Bend constitutes a **Major Flag**. They are established as the "displaced" in Dallas who haunt Marcus's conscience. Bringing them physically into the "Bend" without an explanation of their migration violates the core established tension of the Marcus/Sarah relationship.