book 1 finished, created some images for the cover, working towards publishable

chapters/book1/epilogue-input.md

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+# Epilogue Input — [Title TBD]
+
+## Scene Goals
+
+**Milestone Beat:** Time-skip resolution + Book 2 seeds. The reader sees what Phelan has built.
+
+**Timeline:** Months after the cure. Deep winter. Snow or heavy cold settled over Drenwick.
+
+The Epilogue shows the life Phelan has built — not through dramatic beats, but through domestic detail. He's moved. Mere is there. He trains daily. The guild sends him bigger cases. And one arrives that engages the noise in a new way.
+
+### Beat 1: The New Home
+- Not the dream house — a rented place, but a *real* place. Proper walls, proper foundation. Not a shack on the dockside. Maybe guild quarter edge, affordable with two incomes
+- Mere lives there. Established fact, not recent event. Her things on the shelf. Her books. Moss preparations in the workshop corner. Sniff has a corner
+- Her handwriting in the margins of the house plans on the wall — the *real* house, still being planned. Revision ten, maybe
+- She left Charlette's controlled orbit on her own terms. Thresholds is still Charlette's (deed = leash). That fight is unresolved — Book 2 territory. Mere chose to leave. The independence is hers, not given
+- Domestic details should feel lived-in, not narrated. Not "Mere moved in three weeks ago." Instead: the particular silence of a home that has two people's quiet in it
+
+### Beat 2: Training with Leon
+- Morning training. Daily routine. Phelan and Leon sparring — fire work, melee integration, stamina building
+- This isn't the rusty, sluggish fire of Ch05. Practiced. Maintained. Improving. The 8-10 second combat window from Ch06 is expanding. Not through talent — through work
+- Phelan's motivation is pragmatic: the Floundry cure nearly killed him at 2-3% reserves. Guild work is dangerous. He needs stamina, endurance, combat readiness. Operational necessity, not heroic training montage
+- Leon as daily partner deepens their bond. Riffing, shared shorthand, mutual competence-respect. Friendship expressed through sweat and fire
+- **Leon seed (Book 2):** During or after training, Leon mentions something offhand. Someone asked about the Vethani Crypts job. Or inquiries about pre-Compact artifacts in Drenwick's grey market. Or the anonymous buyer of the Mallory focusing crystal resurfacing with questions. Just a flicker. Leon's not worried — "People ask." Phelan's noise files it. Not urgent. Present
+  - **Author note:** This plants the thread that Leon's careless sale (1,200 silvers to an anonymous buyer, no questions asked) comes back to bite him in Book 2. He didn't care who bought it. That carelessness has consequences
+
+### Beat 3: Guild Standing
+- Brief. Phelan's standing has shifted. Not formal promotion (the guild may not work that way), but the cases are different now. Higher stakes. Better pay. "The Pirate Shade broke an unbreakable curse" has moved through the network
+- Maybe a brief Ledger interaction — new case brief delivered. Higher tier. The kind that pays enough to move the house math forward another step
+
+### Beat 4: The Case Brief — Ending
+- A new case brief on the table. Not described in detail — just enough to signal: bigger, more complex, more interesting
+- Phelan reads it. The noise engages. The bracelet's stone (warm amber, fully recovered) pulses against his wrist
+- The last line should feel like a door opening, not a cliffhanger. Not fear. Not dread. The particular energy of a mind that sees patterns engaging with a new pattern
+- **Final noise beat:** Quieter than the book's usual chaos. More focused. The noise has changed — not just scattered processing, but a tool he's learning to use. *(The case. The numbers. The training. The kitchen that faces east. The category that doesn't need a name. The chain that held.)* Something like contentment, if contentment had sharper edges
+
+## Key Dialog
+
+- Leon (training): banter, shorthand, the comfort of daily repetition with someone who matches your speed
+- Leon (seed): Something offhand about the Vethani Crypts or the buyer. Casual. "People ask." The dismissal is the point — Leon doesn't see the danger. Phelan's noise does
+- Ledger or guild contact: whatever delivers the new case. Brief, professional
+
+## Character Moments
+
+- **Mere:** Present through domestic fact. Her space in the home. Not a scene about Mere — a scene where Mere *is there*, the way a partner is there. The emotional resolution already happened (Ch21). This is the lived reality of it
+- **Leon:** Daily training partner. The friendship that runs deepest because it's built on shared work, not shared feelings. The seed about the Crypts sale should feel organic — a throwaway line that the reader files the same way Phelan's noise does
+- **Sniff:** The dog from Ch03. Has a corner. Is comfortable. A small circle closing — the first case led to the dog, the dog led to Mere, Mere led to everything
+- **Phelan:** Settled. Not satisfied — he never will be. But the edges are smoother. He has a home, a partner, a routine, a reputation, and a new case. The noise is manageable. The math works. Almost
+
+## Mood / Tone
+
+Settled. Domestic. Winter-quiet. The pacing is the slowest in the book — this is a coda, not a chapter. The humor is warm. The tension is low but present (Leon's seed, the new case). The reader should close the book feeling: *this world is real, these people are real, I want to come back*.
+
+## Freeform Notes
+
+- The Epilogue should be shorter than a full chapter — maybe 2,000-3,000 words. It's a coda, not an act
+- Winter setting creates visual contrast with the autumn of the main story. The world has moved on. Time has passed. Life has settled
+- Sniff as a through-line: the dog from the first real exploit, living in the home Phelan built (rented) with the woman he met buying binding salts. Everything connects
+- The "kitchen faces east" callback one more time — maybe Mere's annotations on the plans, or a detail about the rented place's kitchen facing the wrong direction. The dream house is still the dream. But the interim is good
+- Don't over-explain the Leon seed. One mention. Filed. The reader who's paying attention catches it. The reader who isn't will be surprised in Book 2. Both responses are correct
+- End on the noise. Always end on the noise. But this time, the noise sounds different. Almost like it's working *with* him instead of despite him