# Chapter 359: The Council's Reaction
The war room of Elder Caine felt smaller in the morning light. The rough-hewn timbers of the longhouse, usually smelling of pine and hearth smoke, now seemed to carry the metallic tang of sleepless anxiety. Soren stood at the head of the heavy oak table, a sliver of pale sunlight cutting across the floorboards to illuminate the dust motes dancing in the air. He had not slept. The image of Elara's face, twisted by fanaticism and captured in Ghost's charcoal sketch, had been burned onto the back of his eyelids. He felt hollowed out, a vessel filled with a cold, hard resolve.
Nyra sat to his right, her presence a steady, grounding force. She had a stack of coded transcripts and a map of the Bloom-Wastes spread before her, her fingers tracing the contours of a region marked only as 'The Silent Expanse'. Her expression was a mask of professional calm, but Soren could see the tension in the set of her jaw. Across from them, Captain Bren leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his broad chest. The old soldier's face was a roadmap of scars, his eyes narrowed, missing nothing. He was the rock against which the waves of this new crisis would break.
The fourth chair, at the foot of the table, was occupied by Prince Cassian. He was immaculate, his black uniform pressed to a razor's edge, the silver hawk of the Crownlands gleaming on his collar. He looked like he had stepped out of a different world, one of polished marble and strategic maps drawn with clean, confident lines. He radiated an aura of impatient authority, his gaze fixed on Soren with the cold assessment of a man judging a flawed weapon.
Soren took a breath, the air thick with unspoken questions. He pushed the charcoal sketch across the table. It slid to a stop in the center of the pool of sunlight. "This is Elara," he said, his voice rougher than he intended. "She's alive."
The silence that followed was absolute. Bren leaned forward, his brow furrowed as he studied the drawing. He looked from the sketch to Soren, his eyes filled with a dawning, weary comprehension. Nyra simply nodded, her own gaze confirming the grim truth she had helped him decipher hours ago.
Cassian, however, did not even glance at the image. His eyes remained locked on Soren. "Explain," he commanded, his tone clipped and devoid of sympathy. "Your message was… abrupt."
Soren's hands clenched into fists at his sides. He forced them to unclench. "Ghost's final packet wasn't just about the spy. It was a personnel file. A high-value target assessment. The Ashen Remnant calls her 'The Voice's Chosen'. She's one of their leaders, their chief propagandist. The one who turns captured Gifted into… those things we found in Oakhaven."
He gestured to the sketch. "Her name is Elara. She was from my caravan. A friend. I thought she died in the labor pits a decade ago." The words felt like stones in his throat. "She didn't. The Remnant found her. They broke her. And they remade her into this."
Bren finally looked up, his face grim. "Gods above, Soren. I'm sorry." He tapped a finger on the map. "And this 'Sanctuary of Silence'? That's where she is?"
"According to the file," Nyra confirmed, her voice cutting through the tension. "It's a fortified encampment deep in the Expanse. They call it the heart of their faith. It's where they perform their 'purifications'." She slid a sheet of paper across the table. "Ghost managed to decrypt a partial roster. It's not just a camp; it's a command center. If we hit it, we could decapitate their entire leadership structure."
Cassian finally picked up the sketch, holding it between two fingers as if it were contaminated. He studied it for a long moment, his expression unreadable. "A tragic story," he said, his voice flat. "A ghost from your past. But it does not change the strategic reality. This woman, this 'Elara', is now a high-ranking officer in a terrorist organization. She is a legitimate military target."
"She's more than that," Soren insisted, leaning forward, his palms flat on the table. "She's the key. She knows how they do it. How they break people. If we could capture her, not kill her, we could learn their methods. We could find a way to reverse it. We could save the people they've taken."
"And how do you propose we 'capture' her, Soren?" Cassian asked, placing the sketch back down with a soft, final tap. "We march an army into the most hostile region on the continent, past Remnant patrols and Bloom-spawn, to infiltrate a fortified monastery and kidnap their high priestess? Do you hear how insane that sounds? It's a fool's errand."
"It's a surgical strike," Nyra countered smoothly. "A small team. In and out. My contacts in the League have operatives with experience in deep-waste infiltration. The intelligence value is incalculable. Understanding their indoctrination process is more valuable than a dozen battlefield victories. It's a war of ideas, Cassian. You can't kill an idea with a sword."
"You can kill the person spreading it," the prince retorted, his voice rising with a sharp, metallic edge. "That's how wars are won. You break things. You kill the enemy until they can no longer fight. This obsession with 'understanding' is a Sable League weakness. You think you can talk your way out of every problem. The Remnant does not want to talk. They want to exterminate us. They proved that in Oakhaven."
The memory of the butchered healers and the desecrated bodies hung in the air, a raw and festering wound. Bren's knuckles were white where he gripped the arms of his chair. "The prince has a point, Soren," the old captain said, his voice heavy with reluctance. "The risk is astronomical. Even if we could get a team in, the chances of them getting out with a high-value prisoner who doesn't want to be taken… it's near zero. We'd be sacrificing our best people for a ghost."
"She's not a ghost!" Soren's voice cracked, the raw emotion he'd been holding back finally breaking through. "She's a person! A person I failed! The system failed her, the pits failed her, and now this… this cult has her soul. You're talking about sacrificing people? I'm talking about saving one! If we can save her, we prove we're better than them. We prove there's a point to all of this beyond just surviving!"
He slammed his fist onto the oak table, the sound cracking through the tense air like a whip. "She is not just a target, Cassian. She is a victim. The system broke her, and the Remnant remade her. If we can reach her, we can learn how they do it. We can find a way to undo it."
Cassian laughed, a short, sharp sound devoid of humor. He leaned forward, his aristocratic face cold and unforgiving. "You want to negotiate with people who carve up our allies and worship death? You speak of undoing their work? There is no undoing what was done in Oakhaven. There is only fire and steel. You have lost more than your Gift, Soren. You've lost your mind." The prince straightened up, his gaze sweeping over Nyra and the silent Bren. "I will not risk my men on a fool's errand to chase a ghost through the wastes. This council is for warriors, not mourners."
He turned to leave, his dismissal absolute. The room felt suddenly colder, the sunlight on the floor seeming to dim. The fracture was no longer a hairline crack; it was a chasm. Soren saw it in Bren's conflicted expression, in Nyra's defiant stillness. Cassian represented the old way, the way of the Crownlands and the Ladder: overwhelming force, brutal efficiency, and the sacrifice of the few for the many. Soren's plea was for something new, something harder.
"Wait," Nyra said, her voice quiet but carrying an undeniable weight. Cassian paused at the door, his back to them. "You're right, Cassian. We can't negotiate with them. And Soren's plan is emotionally compromised." Soren flinched, but she held up a hand, silencing him. "But you're also wrong. Killing Elara makes her a martyr. It proves their doctrine that we are mindless monsters. Capturing her, however… exposing her to the world, showing her followers that their 'Chosen' is just a frightened girl from the labor pits… that doesn't just kill a soldier. It shatters a faith."
She stood, walking around the table to stand beside Soren, a united front. "We don't do this for Soren's past. We do it for our future. We do it to turn their greatest weapon against them. This isn't a rescue mission, Your Highness. It's a psychological operation. The most important one we will ever undertake."
Cassian stood motionless for a long moment, his hand on the doorframe. The silence was thick with the clash of their wills. Finally, without turning around, he spoke. "You have until sundown. Present me with a plan that is tactically sound, with acceptable risk parameters and a clear objective that serves the war effort. Not your conscience, Soren. The war." He pulled the door open and stepped out into the morning, leaving the scent of cold air and the bitter taste of a divided council in his wake.