Chapter 145: The Bureaucratic Front
The victory in the cove was a localized cure, but the disease was systemic. While Aurora and Elara burned out the corruption-seed with focused memory, the imperial capital was drowning in a subtler, more pervasive strain of the Weaponized Doubt.
Commander Vale Director Vale now stood in her new office in the Truth-Seer Corps headquarters. The room was spare, functional, and currently vibrating with low-grade panic. Reports piled on her desk were not casualty lists, but civic autopsies: judicial grids locked in procedural paralysis, trade guilds suing each other over perceived breaches of etiquette from years past, and three separate riots in the municipal grain depots sparked by rumors of "tainted goodwill."
