Convention

Central Kentucky survived the restoration war. It still has no country. Delegates gather at a guarded agricultural campus outside Versailles to decide what comes next: restore the United States, preserve a loose county league, or create a nation unlike the one that failed. Daniel Mercer is present only as a witness. He has no vote, no office, and no right to escape the history every faction intends to use against him. Then violence inside the perimeter seals the campus after a delegate challenges crucial evidence about the EMP. A rare cartridge and a planted cipher sheet point toward Hadi Nouri. Communications fail. Wildfire smoke closes the roads. Water and cooling become bargaining chips as Marshal Gideon Voss offers protection in exchange for national military command. Emma struggles to reconcile hostile visions of representation, citizenship, property, withdrawal, and executive power. Daniel must help test the evidence without turning personal trust into another exception. Every investigative shortcut resembles an abuse the convention was assembled to prevent. Every proposed emergency safeguard creates a new path for fear to take control. Before delegates can design a government, they must survive the political system forming around them. The Convention is Book Eighteen of The Ash Commonwealth, a serialized post-apocalyptic political thriller series intended to be read in order.