What was in the camp while I was not

Artifact Intent

• Story role: Observation. The MC walks the shelter perimeter and catalogues the changes. No explanations are offered.
• Playable-lore position: clue -> investigation step. The MC's notes become the evidence base for the Lost Hours arc.
• What this artifact must not claim: any cause for the changes; any name for whatever was in the camp; any cosmological framing; any narrator voice from outside the MC.

Narrative Surface Notes

• Artifact shape: a catalogue entry, with short paragraphs per item. Reads like a person who has trained themselves to write a list rather than panic.
• Player-facing uncertainty: the MC names every change but assigns no cause to any of them. The MC writes the shape of a track but not what made it.
• Journal or objective linkage: contributes to act0.survive.recover-the-lost-hours; pins the evidence list in the Journal.

Body Draft

A list. I write it like a list because that is what I can do.

The fire pit. Cold. No ember. The wood I had stacked has been moved. Not knocked over. Moved — the stack has been picked apart and set down again. Two of the larger pieces are inside the wedge now, near where my head would have been. The smaller kindling is in a small heap outside the wedge, on the bare ground.

The ash from the pit. Not where the pit kept it. Pushed in a line about a hand wide, away from the pit, toward the wedge. The line ends at the edge of the wedge. The line is not a footprint, but it is a line a foot might make if a foot was pushing ash.

The pack. On the right side of the wedge when I left it on the left. The strap is undone. I did not undo the strap. I would never undo the strap and leave the pack.

The water skin. Cap on. Half empty. Not on its side. Standing up where I would have stood it.

The tracks. Outside the wedge. In the soft ground near the fallen tree. There are tracks I can read and tracks I cannot.

Tracks I can read: my own boots going out, my own boots coming back, and a place where my boots stop and start again about three paces from the wedge — where the page must have stopped, I think.

Tracks I cannot read: a print, or what I will call a print, longer than my hand and narrower at one end. The edges are too clean for paw. Too long for hoof. There is no claw mark at the narrow end and no toe pattern at the wide end. There are three of them. They come from the slope. They stop short of the wedge by two paces. They do not turn back. They are not followed by any returning print.

Whatever made them did not run away after it made them.

The old stones, looked at from where I am sitting now. Still nearer in the eye than they were in the morning. I am writing this so I cannot tell myself later I made it up.

I am going to sit with my back to the rock and the knife across my knees until I can think.

Playable Consequences

• Immediate consequence: registers the evidence inventory in the Journal as part of the recover-the-lost-hours objective; the inventory entries persist and can be cross-referenced.
• Follow-up clue, mission, site, or world-state change: the "visitor" passive entity registers; later entries (camp ambushes, ward findings) can call back to this evidence.
• Related branch or linear continuation: child of the Lost Hours arc; rejoin point at act0-day2-morning-came.

Review Notes

• Open questions: how the evidence inventory renders in the Journal UX (a checklist, a pinned page, an annotated map) is a gd-journal.md concern; this entry expresses the inventory in body prose.
• Canon-delta follow-up: none.
• Audit carry-forward: the "longer than my hand, narrower at one end" track shape should stay consistent across later entries that revisit demon-trace observation.

Voice Readback

A list. I wrote it like a list because that was what I could do.

The fire pit. Cold. No ember. The wood I had stacked had been moved. Not knocked over. Moved — the stack had been picked apart and set down again. Two of the larger pieces were inside the wedge now, near where my head would have been. The smaller kindling was in a small heap outside the wedge, on the bare ground.

The ash from the pit. Not where the pit had kept it. Pushed in a line about a hand wide, away from the pit, toward the wedge. The line ended at the edge of the wedge. The line was not a footprint, but it was a line a foot might make if a foot was pushing ash.

The pack. On the right side of the wedge when I had left it on the left. The strap was undone. I had not undone the strap. I would never undo the strap and leave the pack.

The water skin. Cap on. Half empty. Not on its side. Standing up where I would have stood it.

The tracks. Outside the wedge. In the soft ground near the fallen tree. There were tracks I could read and tracks I could not.

Tracks I could read: my own boots going out, my own boots coming back, and a place where my boots stopped and started again about three paces from the wedge — where the page must have stopped, I thought.

Tracks I could not read: a print, or what I would call a print, longer than my hand and narrower at one end. The edges were too clean for paw. Too long for hoof. There was no claw mark at the narrow end and no toe pattern at the wide end. There were three of them. They came from the slope. They stopped short of the wedge by two paces. They did not turn back. They were not followed by any returning print.

Whatever had made them had not run away after it had made them.

The old stones, looked at from where I was sitting then. Still nearer in the eye than they had been in the morning. I wrote it so I could not tell myself later I had made it up.

I was going to sit with my back to the rock and the knife across my knees until I could think.