clean up edits and chapter 15 done, 16 in draft

world/story-summary-book2.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 **Purpose:** Quick-reference continuity document for Claude Code. Consult this file at the start of any drafting or revision session to establish context without re-reading all chapter drafts. For detailed revisions or line-level continuity checks, consult the full chapter drafts directly.
 
-**Last updated:** Ch14 final (2026-04-06)
+**Last updated:** Ch15 final (2026-04-07)
 
 ---
 
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
 | Ch12 | Devod | Day 11 (Wednesday equiv.) | Day 11 |
 | Ch13 | The Weight of It | Day 11 evening (Wednesday equiv.) | Day 11 |
 | Ch14 | The Villain Becomes a Victim | Day 12 (Thursday equiv.) | Day 12 |
+| Ch15 | The Wolf | Day 13 (Friday equiv.) | Day 13 |
 
 **Time gap from Book 1:** ~3 months after the epilogue. Deep winter → late winter.
 
@@ -301,6 +302,47 @@ Duration: three seconds, maybe four. Long enough to be certain of death. Short e
 
 ---
 
+### Ch15: The Wolf
+
+**Timeline:** Day 13 (Friday equivalent). Pre-dawn through afternoon. Devod's room, Millford Street.
+
+**Summary:** Quiet character chapter — emotional reset between Ch14's revelations and Ch16's planning phase. Three scenes. Devod regains real consciousness. Brennan Toor arrives. Phelan's model of Devod is demolished and rebuilt.
+
+**Scene 1 — Wake (pre-dawn to mid-morning):** Phelan wakes in the chair at Millford Street (slept there overnight). Mere has been at Devod's bedside ~38 hours with breaks measured in minutes. Bracelet at 70% — checked three times, passive thread confirmed dead. Devod's eyes open with real focus for the first time since the draining. Manages two words: "Mere" and "How long?" Mere's response follows the same protocol she used on Phelan after the Ch09 drain: flat palm on forehead, one instruction ("Two days. Rest."), same clinical authority. Phelan observes the structural pattern — not situational caregiving, a protocol. Devod complies.
+
+**Scene 2 — Brennan's Visit (mid-morning, chapter centerpiece):** Knock at the door. Mere answers and greets **Brennan Toor** by name — no surprise, no explanation. "He's awake. Briefly." Brennan enters: mid-to-late fifties, broad build, combat-trained spatial awareness (half-second corner scan on entry — reflex, not assessment). Calls Devod "Wolf" immediately. Devod recognises him with visible warmth. "You got old." / "You look like someone fed you through a mangle." Brennan arrived via **The Cairns** (the Pathfinder old-timer network, internal name not revealed to Phelan): "Word came through the network that you were down. Took me two days to get here from the northern contracts."
+
+**The Locksmith anomaly (Ledger seed):** Brennan calls Phelan "the Locksmith" — guild alias, guild nomenclature. Phelan's noise fires: Mere doesn't use that name, Devod doesn't use that name. Whoever briefed Brennan had guild-level operational context. Either the guild feeds into Brennan's network, or the network feeds into the guild, or they're the same infrastructure. Brennan doesn't read as guild. Doesn't resolve. Filed. **(Ledger Pathfinder seed #4 — Ledger used The Cairns to relay guild intel to Brennan.)**
+
+Mere explains casually: "Brennan visited a few days after I was born. He's been to Drenwick three or four times since to visit. It never came up." Phelan notes: entire chapters of each other's lives unread.
+
+**The Vethek Pass Story:** Brennan tells the defining Pathfinder mission — twenty-three or twenty-four years ago, frontier clearance in the eastern ranges. Four ideas: (1) Scout team up the ridge — started a rockslide, nearly buried supplies, pack caught fire. (2) Earthwork barricade — built on a water seep, collapsed in four minutes. (3) Not discussed. (4) Devod splits the unit — main force as distraction, Devod leads five-man flanking squad down a goat track on the southern ridge. Close-quarters combat from above: forearm strikes, terrain control, leading from the front. Cleared the bottleneck in minutes. "That's why we called him the Wolf. Wolves are pack animals. The alpha doesn't run from the threat — he runs toward it."
+
+**Phelan's internal cascade (noise parentheticals, rapid-fire):** Everything remaps. Mine navigation (Book 1) = Pathfinder terrain assessment. Mine combat = terrain control training. Forearm/collarbone strikes = precision disabling techniques. Ten-ideas methodology = survival methodology, not personality quirk. "Everything I categorised as civilian instinct was elite military competence wearing civilian clothes, and I missed it because the model I built was wrong from the first data point." Mere's non-reaction is the final confirmation — she's always known. Phelan is the last one catching up.
+
+**Brennan's departing offer:** Asks about the draining. Phelan gives him Cass Rykhard's name. Brennan offers a contact: **Aldric Vane**, warehouse district, east side, near the old grain exchange. Logistics, security. "Tell him the Wolf sent you." Phelan's noise connects: Brennan's network — former Pathfinders in senior guild positions, scattered. Brennan is the visible one. And who fed him guild nomenclature? Filed alongside the Locksmith anomaly.
+
+**Devod's farewell:** Grips Brennan's forearm — the most physical effort since regaining consciousness. Two seconds. The effort spent on that.
+
+**Scene 3 — Prepare (afternoon):** Room resettles. Devod in real sleep. Bracelet still at 70% — passive thread dead, stuck since the courtyard charge two days ago. Phelan calculates: 70% bracelet + 20% jacket absorption = 90% theoretical coverage, less in practice. Not enough. Begins active manual charging — upper range resists more than the initial 50-to-70 pour (stone pressurised, reserves thinned from two days of background thread). Eighty percent by evening, ninety by morning, one hundred depends on reserves vs. planning timeline. Mere notices, returns to work without comment.
+
+**Closing beat:** Phelan in the corner feeding charge into the bracelet. Former Pathfinder sleeping. Woman who always knew tending her father. Tomorrow they build the plan — Mere's herbal research, Flaw Sight data, Devod's contribution from the bed, and now Aldric Vane in the warehouse district. "The quiet of getting ready."
+
+**Noise parentheticals:** 10 total. Scene 1: 1 (observational — Mere's protocol pattern). Scene 2: 8 (combat-trained entry read, relationship observation, Locksmith anomaly, single-word "Pathfinder" recognition, three rapid-fire cascade fragments during the story, network/guild-nomenclature callback). Scene 3: 1 (tactical — "close to enough" is insufficient).
+
+**Sniff:** Not present (Millford Street, not Chandler's Row).
+
+**New canon established:**
+- Brennan Toor introduced on-page: old Pathfinder comrade, mid-to-late fifties, calls Devod "Wolf," holds senior position in a mercenary guild
+- Devod's Pathfinder past revealed to Phelan — delivery-driver model demolished
+- Aldric Vane contact seeded (warehouse district, logistics/security outfit)
+- The Cairns (old-timer network) established as active, responsive infrastructure — Phelan doesn't learn the name
+- Ledger seed planted: guild nomenclature reached Brennan through the network, implying guild-Cairns overlap
+- Bracelet charging from 70% toward 100% — active manual effort, upper range resists more
+- Mere has known about Devod's Pathfinder service since childhood (pre-ultimatum)
+
+---
+
 ## 3. Active Character Tracker
 
 | Character | Status at End of Ch14 | Last Seen |