Back in Vehrmath, the city pulsed with tension. The purple signal had become more than just communication—it was identity, movement, defiance. And Vassian Arcten had no intention of allowing it to last.
From the polished glass tower of House Arcten, Vassian reviewed intelligence reports under soft lighting that hummed with sanctioned enchantments. He studied diagrams of the pulse-net: its blooming clusters, its spread across rooftops and tunnels. It had become a virus of ideology, coded in purple.
He had already tried sabotage, bureaucracy, silence.
But Benedict had grown too careful, too communal. You couldn't strangle one mind if a thousand others echoed the same pattern.
So Vassian would change tactics.
"Fracture him," he said to Nerys, who stood by the window. "Not his tech—his people. We make them question, bicker, divide. Collapse him from within."
She nodded once.
He reviewed the dossiers of Benedict's allies—Arden Vel, Eline Vort, Nim Tealeaf, even the elf Shael. There were tensions already. Arden favored control. Eline valued chaos. Nim wanted flair. Shael, always silent, had influence no one could quite pin down.
"Start small," Vassian said. "Offer advancement. Gold. Clout. But make it look like opportunity—not war."
He sent forged courier directives. Hired intermediaries to whisper doubts. Paid minor craftsmen to pose as sympathizers.
Let the seams stretch until something snapped.
Later, in a private study lined with glowing law-plates and memory quills, Vassian reviewed the histories of noble collapses—castles crumbling from within. "Ideology is a brittle shell," he murmured. "Loyalty fractures fastest at the center."
He dispatched messages to minor noble houses that had feuds with House Virellen and House Senhald—carefully framing Benedict's rise as a threat to their economic inheritance. Vassian's letters promised inclusion. Shares. A future.
"But only one voice at a time," he whispered.
He began calling this his "Crumbling the Castle Within" strategy—patient corrosion through fear, incentive, and clever appeal to self-interest. To bring down the tower, you didn't aim for the keystone. You made the bricks question their purpose.
Benedict noticed the change first in the tempo of the pulses. Not the content—the rhythm. Message loops that should've pulsed once per cycle came staggered. Lagged. Some never arrived.
Eline said it was interference. Arden said it was burnout. Benedict suspected something subtler.
A courier arrived late one night—ashen-faced, hands trembling. "They offered me a license," she whispered. "Guild-stamped. They said if I walked away now, they'd erase the penalties. No more fines. A spot on the approved list."
Benedict didn't ask who "they" were. He didn't need to.
He told Arden, "We've entered the real war. Not fire and raids. But trust."
"Then we need to test ours," Arden replied grimly.
They reviewed the inner circle. Tightened encryption protocols. Built fallback layers. But it wasn't enough.
A key node station collapsed after a false signal rerouted the power grid. The failure echoed across three districts. Public confidence dropped.
Some of their own couriers asked: "Why are we fighting this hard? The nobles offer peace."
Benedict stared at the flickering map.
"Because peace without a voice is obedience," he said.
He remembered his years as a failed wizard trainee. The endless hours spent meditating to no avail, the scorn of classmates who could conjure sparks while he wrestled with silence. "Some are born with mana," one tutor said. "Others with mouths." It had been a cruel taunt—but not inaccurate.
He hadn't been born to shape spells. He had been born to shape systems.
In his exile from arcane orthodoxy, Benedict had discovered something deeper: the power not of spells, but of interfaces—of building tools others could use, of making the arcane legible to all.
"Wizards hoard," he whispered now. "Artificers share."
And it was that sharing, not the tech, that threatened men like Vassian.
He formed his own counter-strategy: "Divide and Conquer the Nobles." One house at a time. He would fracture their alliances, find overlooked heirs, forge odd partnerships. Not through direct conflict, but by making their unity untenable.
Late that week, an encrypted invitation arrived in the hub—unsigned, pulsing once every seven minutes. Location: neutral ground, old transit station Sigma-7. Offer: dialogue.
Eline voted no. Arden was ready to scout it.
Benedict went alone.
He waited beneath a crumbling arch, surrounded by flickering mana-lamps and abandoned rune scaffolding.
Vassian arrived precisely at the hour—robes impeccable, eyes calm. No guards.
"I thought it best we speak plainly," Vassian said.
Benedict's arms crossed. "About what? The sabotage? The bribes?"
"About endings," Vassian replied. "Your system has passion. Beauty, even. But it lacks structure. Governance. It will fall—either by division or by disinterest."
"You came to gloat?"
"I came to offer clarity." Vassian's gaze sharpened. "Your friends are not your equals. Arden craves legacy. Eline wants fire. Shael hides. And you—you're still pretending this isn't political."
Benedict stared at him. "And what are you offering? Chains with better wallpaper?"
"Stability," Vassian said. "History forgets signal. But it remembers towers."
Benedict stepped forward. "Then let me remind history what a signal can do."
Vassian turned away. "You'll regret not listening."
Benedict's reply was simple.
"I already stopped listening to you."
As Vassian vanished into the dark corridor, Benedict felt the ground shift—not beneath his feet, but in the people. Some would turn. Some would stay. He didn't need perfection.
He needed belief.
He walked back to the hub, thinking of every node flickering with quiet light.
The next day, he distributed relay cores embedded with cooperative signal checks—designed not to punish defection, but to reward mutual verification.
"Divide them one noble at a time," he told Eline. "But hold our people together, one signal at a time."