# Chapter 910: The Crown's Envoy
The Concord Council chamber was a space designed to intimidate. A vast, circular room, its floor was a polished mosaic of the three great powers: the golden wheat of the Crownlands, the silver cog of the Sable League, and the white sunburst of the Radiant Synod. Above, a domed ceiling was painted with a sanitized history of the world, a heroic tableau of the Bloom's end and the Concord's founding. The air, thick with the scent of old parchment, beeswax, and the cloying sweetness of noble perfumes, was heavy with unspoken power. Sunlight, filtered through high, arched windows, fell in dusty columns that illuminated the three raised daises where the ruling tripartite sat.
At the center of it all, standing on a single, unadorned stone platform, was King Cassian. He was no longer the prince who had sparred in secret Ladder pits, his face now clean-shaved and his jaw set with the rigid authority of the Crownlands' newest monarch. He wore a simple but immaculate tunic of black and gold, the colors of his house, devoid of the ostentatious jewels favored by his predecessors. His hands, resting on the polished wood of the podium, were steady, but his eyes, scanning the faces of the council members, held a deep, weary light. He was an envoy, but not for a faction. He was an envoy for a memory.
He cleared his throat, the sound echoing in the tense silence. "Esteemed members of the Concord," he began, his voice carefully modulated to carry without shouting. "I stand before you today not as a king demanding, but as a concerned party reporting. My agents have compiled extensive data on the entity now known in the southern coastal regions as the 'Tidewalker,' and in the northern blights as the 'Ashen Walker.'"
He gestured, and a scribe scurried forward to place a stack of bound reports on the podium. Cassian did not look at them. "The reports are consistent. This being, this Silent Pilgrim, has performed acts of environmental purification on a scale previously deemed impossible. It has cleansed the Veridian Pit of its corrosive taint, restored life to the petrified forest of the Glass Grove, and is credited with the miraculous rebirth of the Tidewatch fisheries. Its actions are not aggressive. They are… restorative."
A murmur rippled through the lower seats, where minor nobles and merchant envoys whispered amongst themselves. Cassian pressed on. "The Concord of Cinders was established to prevent war, to manage conflict through the Ladder. This being operates outside that structure, yes, but it does not threaten it. It stabilizes the very lands our wars have scarred. To interfere, to hunt it as some propose, would be to attack a force of nature that is, for the first time in generations, healing our world. I urge this council to declare the Silent Pilgrim a protected phenomenon, a neutral party whose work benefits us all. Leave it be."
He finished, his gaze sweeping the three daises. On the Sable League's platform, a few merchants stroked their beards in thought, their expressions calculating. On the Synod's dais, the faces were grim, carved from stone and disapproval. But it was from the Crownlands' own dais that the first counter-assault came.
Duke Alban of the Ashen Vale, a man whose face was a roadmap of old grievances and whose family had profited immensely from the labor pits, rose slowly to his feet. He was a relic of an older, harsher era, and his voice, when it came, was a gravelly rasp that cut through the chamber's stillness.
"A beautiful speech, Your Majesty," the Duke said, the title laced with condescension. "Poetic. But poetry does not feed our people, nor does it protect them from a god-sized weapon walking unchecked across the continent."
He turned to address the entire chamber, his arms spread wide in a gesture of paternalistic concern. "The King speaks of purification. I speak of the power required to perform such feats. Power that can turn a forest of glass to life can just as easily turn a city of stone to dust. This 'Pilgrim' is an unknown quantity, an uncontrolled variable that shatters the very foundation of the Concord. Our peace is built on a balance of power, a balance we understand. This being upends that balance entirely."
A few of the old guard nobles on the Crownlands' dais nodded in agreement, their faces grim. The Duke's voice grew louder, more impassioned. "We have reports from the Synod's Inquisitors—brave men who saw its power firsthand. They speak of a psychic scream that shattered minds, of a being that commands the very essence of the Bloom. This is not a gardener, my lords and ladies. This is the Bloom's heir, a new Withering King in the making. We must not wait for it to choose a target. We must form a joint task force, a Concord-sanctioned army, and we must hunt it down. Contain it. Or, if necessary, destroy it for the safety of the Crownlands and all the realms."
The chamber erupted. Shouts of agreement clashed with cries of protest. A Sable League envoy slammed his fist on his table. "And who will pay for this army, Duke? Your labor pits?" A Synod prelate rose, his face a mask of righteous fury. "The Inquisitors are prepared to lead such a crusade! It is a holy duty to cleanse the world of such an abomination!" The debate was a wildfire, consuming the room's order, exposing the raw fear and ambition the being's existence had provoked.
Cassian watched the chaos unfold, his logical arguments, his carefully compiled reports, all drowned out by the tide of fear. He saw Duke Alban's allies coalescing, saw the neutral parties swayed by the Duke's potent imagery of a weapon aimed at their homes. He was losing. He was losing the one chance he had to protect the memory of his friends.
Frustration, cold and sharp, pierced through his royal composure. He saw the faces of Soren and Nyra in his mind's eye, not as they were in the Ladder, but as they were in the final moments—sacrificing everything. This council, this room full of powerful men and women, was debating the legacy of that sacrifice as if it were a mere political commodity.
He slammed his palm on the podium. The sound was not loud, but it was sharp, a crack of finality that cut through the din. The chamber fell silent, all eyes turning back to the young king. His face was pale, his knuckles white where he gripped the wood. He looked not at the Duke, not at the Synod prelate, but at the empty center of the room, as if speaking to the ghosts only he could see.
"You speak of weapons," he said, his voice low and trembling with a suppressed fury that was far more potent than any shout. "You speak of threats. You debate this being as if it were a new Ladder champion to be ranked and managed." He took a shaky breath, his composure fracturing completely. He looked up, his eyes meeting Duke Alban's, and then sweeping across the stunned faces of the council.
"I have seen its heart," Cassian said, his voice barely a whisper, yet it carried to every corner of the silent chamber. "It is not a weapon. It is a sacrifice."
The words hung in the air, a confession so personal, so utterly out of place in the political theater of the Concord, that it left everyone breathless. The young king, the stoic monarch, had just revealed a connection that went far beyond spies and reports. He had spoken not as a king, but as a witness. And in that moment, the entire political landscape of the continent shifted on its axis.