Elara observed the aftermath of Joric's public challenge to Magistrate Ruhl. The immediate digital scramble by Ruhl's operatives—the Silent Weaver's team—confirmed that Ruhl was operating with financial vulnerabilities, just as the Kaelens had. Joric had successfully flushed the enemy out, but the political time bomb was still ticking.
Ruhl's next move would be swift and decisive: eliminating Senator Anisa Vance, the only ethical political figure standing against his proposed authoritarian market control mandate. The Contagion of Silence was about to infect the heart of the new government.
Elara couldn't risk a physical confrontation; capture meant the permanent silencing of her father's truth. She had to use her original weapon: data and misdirection.
A Message Dismissed
Elara used the fragmented data Joric had forced Ruhl to expose, combined with her own analysis of Ruhl's financial shell corporations. She meticulously crafted an anonymous, encrypted data packet. This packet detailed Ruhl's long-term plan to replace Senator Vance, including the exact shell corporation (the "Architectural Maintenance Protocols" fund) he was using to mask his political blackmail.
She inserted the warning into the Senator's highly secure personal communication terminal, using a method so obscure it would bypass conventional security reviews but be instantly flagged as "non-compliant" by the new system's rigid protocols.
The message was clear: Ruhl is fabricating chaos to steal legitimacy. The weakness is the Vance replacement.
Elara waited, expecting the Senator's security team to launch an immediate, quiet investigation. Instead, she watched on her municipal feeds as the data packet was quarantined and flagged with a red-level alert.
A few hours later, a terse, public announcement from the Senator's office confirmed Elara's fear: the warning was dismissed as "Architect propaganda." The message was interpreted as a sophisticated attempt by the fugitive "Architect of Ruin" to destabilize the new government by sowing distrust between high-ranking officials.
The irony was a bitter, physical weight. Elara had tried to protect the fragile, ethical government Joric had fought to create, but her notoriety—the very language of ruin she had invented—had rendered her truth utterly meaningless to the institution she was trying to save. She was now completely external to the system, with no path to legitimate defense. She had to find a different ally, one who operated outside the official structure: the victim.