Chapter 89: The Weight of a Name
The trapper's letter was a stone dropped into the still pond of their mission, sending ripples through all their certainties. It rested on the table in Commander Ector's chamber, a humble, smudged piece of parchment that somehow carried more weight than the imperial scroll with its golden seal.
"Keepers of the New Hearth-Mark," Elara read the title again, her voice soft with awe. "They felt it. Across the mountains."
"The resonance wasn't just contained," Kaelen said, tracing a route on the map beyond the Silver Pass. "It was a sickness leaking out for generations, affecting everything in its sphere. When we silenced the core… we offered relief to places we didn't know were suffering." He looked up, his strategist's mind grappling with the scale. "This changes the strategic reality of the entire northern border. Security isn't about walls, it's about… psychic ecology."
