The Council Chamber in Vigil-Stone Outpost was a weapon disguised as a room. Its polished basalt walls were etched with the Weft of Vigil, the sacred geometric pattern of the Regalis Regime, and its acoustics were engineered to make a single voice an avalanche. Anastasya Orlova stood at its center, her career and perhaps her life balanced on the data-slate she held. The air was cold, recycled, smelling of ozone and the faint, sterile hum of the Crystalline Myxoid plates that provided the room’s unwavering blue-white light. Her objective was simple: to make them see the truth. The obstacle was the Order she had sworn her life to uphold.
In an adjacent antechamber, held under the watch of two guards she no longer trusted, sat the Silvanus. Lauri Vatanen. He was the source of this heresy, the chaotic variable that had shattered her certainty. Her career was on the line because she had listened to him. Because the facts he presented aligned with the dead patrols she had been forced to log as acceptable losses.
She began her presentation, her voice as flat and controlled as the surface of the slate in her hands. She laid out the evidence from the caravan massacre, her words precise, stripped of all emotion. She showed them the imagery of the untouched cargo, the surgical nature of the wounds, the tell-tale grey dust of bodies consumed by the Tears of Ash. She concluded with the Silvanus’s impossible theory.
— The Umbra were not raiding. They were culling, — she stated, letting the word hang in the cold, silent air.
The three envoys from the Chancellery of Forms sat like stone effigies in their high-backed chairs. Their robes were severe, their faces impassive masks of bureaucratic authority. The lead envoy, a stern elder named Valerius, raised a hand, a gesture that was both a dismissal and a judgment.
— Officer Orlova, your report is noted and dismissed. It reads less like an intelligence assessment and more like a symptom of ideological contamination. You have spent too much time in the presence of a chaotic element, — his voice was like shale splitting.
The accusation was a physical blow. He was not questioning her facts; he was questioning her purity, her very allegiance to the Order. It was the most profound insult a Regalis could deliver. Her jaw tightened, a small, hard knot of muscle. This was the price of truth: to be branded a heretic by the high priests of logic.
— The data is verified, — she said, her voice dangerously quiet.
— The data is irrelevant when the source is corrupt, — Valerius countered, his gaze unwavering.
Dmitri Volkov, her loyal second, stepped forward. He had been permitted to attend as a witness, a formality that now felt like a prelude to his own censure. He held his own data-slate.
— With respect, Envoy, the logistical reports support the officer’s field analysis. The asset loss from File 7-Gamma-9 does not align with a scavenging motive, resource expenditure for the patrol does not match the projected resistance of a standard Umbra warband, and the numbers are inconsistent, — Dmitri began, his tone purely pragmatic.
Valerius waved a dismissive hand. — Numbers can be made to say anything, soldier. Doctrine is immutable. The Umbra are chaos. They act as chaos acts. To suggest otherwise is to invite the very decay we exist to prevent. Your request to pursue this… theory… is denied. You will return to standard patrol duties.
The decision was absolute. The council was a wall. Her objective was blocked. She felt a cold fury rise within her, but she crushed it. Emotion was a luxury, a weakness. She gave a curt, precise nod of acknowledgment, the movement a betrayal of the storm raging inside her. She had failed.
An hour later, the chamber was the same, but the air had changed. The sterile scent of ozone was now mixed with the smell of damp soil and the sharp tang of pine resin. Three Silvanus ambassadors stood where the envoys had sat. They wore no armor, only simple tunics of woven fiber. Their faces were hidden behind masks grown from living wood, one of pale birch-bark, the others of dark, fibrous ironwood. They did not sit, but stood with a fluid grace that was an open defiance of the room’s rigid geometry.
The lead ambassador, a matriarch whose mask was woven with threads of silver moss, spoke first. Her voice, filtered through the wood, was the sound of deep roots shifting.
— You bring us to this cage of dead stone and ask for trust, Regalis? You, whose expansion poisons the earth and sickens the life-song?
— The blight that killed your people is the same that killed mine, — Anastasya said, keeping her voice level. The accusation that the Regalis had created the plague was an old one, but the discovery at the pump-house gave it a new, terrible weight. She could not reveal that truth. Not yet. It would mean open war.
— Your poison. You seek a cure for a sickness of your own making, — the matriarch repeated, the words heavy with generations of hatred.
Anastasya countered, changing tactics. She could not win a debate over history; she had to create a shared, immediate future. — I seek a target. I am offering a single point of data. A chemical anomaly in the Reedway Canals that correlates with biotic distress. Help me identify it. That is all.
She projected the data onto her slate: a single, pulsing point of corruption on a map of the waterways. It was a tiny offering, a breadcrumb of truth in a forest of lies. The price was admitting her own faction’s fallibility, a concession that felt like swallowing glass.
The Silvanus conferred in whispers, a soft, sibilant sound like leaves skittering across stone. The matriarch looked from the data-slate back to Anastasya, her masked face unreadable.
— One thread. We will share what our pathfinders know of that specific place. No more. Do not mistake this for an alliance. It is a shared glance at a common blade, — the matriarch said finally.
It was more than she had hoped for. A fragile, unsanctioned agreement. A single lead.
— Agreed, — Anastasya said.
As the Silvanus turned to leave, Anastasya’s gaze swept the room. In the corner, a junior scribe who had been silently documenting the proceedings angled his data-slate away from her line of sight. It was a subtle, almost imperceptible movement, but in her heightened state of awareness, it registered as an anomaly. The scribe was not merely taking notes. He was recording. And not for the official record.
The realization was a shard of ice in her gut. They were being watched. Her heresy was already being logged by a hidden master.
The Silvanus departed, leaving the scent of the living world to be slowly scrubbed away by the room’s sterile air recyclers. The agreement was made. The lead was secured. But the cost was now clear: she was no longer just an officer investigating a threat. She was a dissenter, a target of the very Order she served.
The chamber felt colder than before. The Weft of Vigil on the walls seemed less like a symbol of unity and more like the intricate bars of a cage.
She had her fragile truce. She had her single lead. Now she had to act, knowing that with every step she took away from doctrine, the blades of her own people would be turning toward her back.
