A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the Grand Rotunda as Grand Magistrate Vane’s declaration echoed into the open-air dome.
For a long moment, none of the high emissaries moved.
The sheer absurdity of the claim—that a seven-year-old weaver’s boy had crushed a Tier 2 Ember Tracker and a Smoldering Hound, all while linked to a cosmic event twelve years ago—hung in the air like smoke.
Then, the chamber erupted.
“Absurdity!” laughed High Lady Lyra of the House of Gale, her voice carrying the sharp, whistling resonance of a mounting gale.
She leaned forward over her stone balustrade, her translucent wind-spun silks fluttering around her.
“You drag us from the Whispering Plains to spin ghost stories, Vane?
A child defeating an elite seeker is a failure of House Ember’s training, not a threat to the realm.
You simply want the Council to validate a personal embarrassment.” “A failure of training does not bleed silver light, Lyra,” Vane replied coldly, his eyes locking onto her.
“And a myth from twelve years ago does not rewrite our ledgers,” countered High Chancellor Kaelen of the House of Aether.
He stood up, his cloud-white robes catching the high mountain sun.
As the representative of the Celestial Peaks, his voice carried the absolute, ringing weight of the sky.
“The Pale Star anomaly was a cosmic alignment, a passing distortion in the atmospheric currents.
To tie it to a stray child to justify your lost target is a desperate leap, Grand Magistrate.
House Aether will not authorize gold or vanguard legions based on an old astrological scare.” To his right, a deep, rumbling sigh echoed from the tier of the Ironroot Highlands.
High Lord Torin of the House of Stone slammed a heavy, mineral-veined fist onto his stone desk, the sound cracking like breaking granite.
“I care little for stars, Kaelen.
But I care deeply for a rogue executioner.
If Captain Vance has resurfaced to smuggle anomalies across our borders, then the threat is real—not because of the boy’s magic, but because Vance knows our defenses.
He knows how to slide through the seams of our territories.” “Then let House Ember clean its own doorstep,” a smooth, fluid voice rippled from the far left.
High Priestess Selena of the House of Tides lounged back in her chair, her sapphire-encrusted garments shifting like the ocean surface.
Her blue pupils hummed with the calm, terrifying depth of Aqualis.
“If this boy were a threat to the structured elements, my tides would have felt a disruption in the water veins.
We feel nothing.
The balance remains perfectly whole.
We will not expend our navy or our resources to hunt a ghost in the independent slums.” Throughout the entire debate, the corner of the semi-circle remained entirely dark.
The emissary from the House of Noctis, shrouded in the light-eating cloaks of the Umbral Vale, had not spoken a single word.
But Vane could feel the cold, predatory gaze of the shadow lords drilling into him.
They weren’t dismissing the news; they were analyzing it, calculating how an unaligned force could be weaponized or manipulated if found first.
“You are all blind,” Vane growled; the heat surrounding him distorted the air above the central dais, flames flickering across his eyes.
“You sit behind your walls of stone and gold while a potential threat grows beneath your noses.
If that boy reaches maturity, his very existence could shatter the laws upon which this world was built.” He stepped forward.
“I do not ask for your armies.
I ask for jurisdiction.
Give House Ember authority to cross your borders, search your territories, and find him before his power awakens.”