Kael kept his fingers pressed against his forehead for a few seconds, not because he was searching for some miraculous solution, but because he was beginning to recognize an unpleasant pattern in the projects derived from the First Archive.
Nothing was ever truly difficult because of force.
The problem always came afterward, when someone had to decide which part of an ancient structure still had the right to exist without repeating the exact abuse they were trying to correct.
Destroying the Garden of Bones would be simple.
A little fire, enough magic, maybe Yggdrasil ripping out the roots and Umbra crushing whatever remained beneath the shadows.
Within a few hours, no dead soldier would be capable of marching.
But seventeen thousand contracts would remain unresolved, twenty-four thousand dead would still be reduced to mixed parts and, worse, anyone who found the records later could try rebuilding everything again.
