The Chancellor, hands once again folded behind him, cast his eyes across the lower western tier — to a small, bioluminescent chime that had just begun to pulse.
He inclined his head, just slightly.
“The floor recognizes Moss-Tongue Saereth of the Virellan Mycaticum.”
A quiet hush overtook the rotunda.
Saereth rose — slow, deliberate, the way roots split stone. Barely reaching the shoulder height of their neighboring delegates, they were nonetheless arresting: bark-brown skin latticed with faintly glowing veins that shifted hue with their breath. Their robe, grown rather than stitched, hung from their frame in wet-glistening layers of spore-silk and living moss. No jewelry. No rank sigils. Their presence was enough.
The scent came first.
Not perfume. Not display. But truth, as understood on Virellia: a warm fungal musk touched with cedar rot and fermenting citrus. Not offensive. Not ornamental. Simply… present.
Then, voice.
“If I may, Chancellor,” Saereth said — slow, guttural, each word cultivated like a sacred fruit. Their vocal folds hummed in low resonance, just shy of subharmonic — not enough to shake stone, but enough to settle hearts.
The Chancellor gave a quiet nod.
Saereth turned, carefully, toward the Thassalor arc. The glow-veins along their jaw brightened slightly.
“In service of clarity,” they continued, “and in accordance with quorum rite, I offer this question, grown not from accusation but alignment.”
A pause.
“Were any notifications—through voice, through ink, through spore-seal—submitted from Thassalor, or its Harvest Mycorates, concerning the delayed shipments destined for Cindaros… or the Gravari orbital chain?”
Halris remained still. So did the other Thassarist envoys. Their silence was practiced. Polished. But on Virellia, no answer is always an answer.
The glow-veins along Saereth’s spine flared briefly.
Their tone remained unchanged.
“Let the record hold this silence,” they said, “as absence of notification.”
And then, they turned — slowly, subtly — toward the chamber at large. Their breath shifted again. The scent darkened — bark-tannin and dry fermentation. Ritual readiness.
“I now invoke,” Saereth intoned, “Ordinance 74.3.2, Concord-root clause, session twenty-nine-thousand-four-hundred-eighty-seven — the Grain Compensation Covenant, as recognized by full spore-quorum and archived within the Lexicon’s Scriptorial Vault.”
They let the citation settle. Then continued.
“If any shipment of designated sustenance—be it caloric, fermentive, or psychonutritional—is delayed beyond they original allotted delivery time without formal notice, payment is to be reduced by forty percent. The clause exists to recoup loss of sustenance and to uphold the cycle of reciprocal dependence.”
Their eyes — large, glimmering like sap in moonlight — scanned the chamber.
“This law was not meant to punish. It was meant to compost arrogance. To remind the moons: rot left unattended will spread.”A faint chord of discomfort passed through the rotunda.
Saereth bowed their head — shallow, slow.
“This reminder is given not in protest… but in return.”
And with that, they seated themselves — glow-veins dimming, scent withdrawing like dew into bark.
The Chancellor did not speak immediately. For several breaths, he simply watched the space where Saereth had stood — as if weighing the silence itself for judgment.
Then, quietly:
“Noted for the record.”
There was a moment — half a breath — in which the chamber held its stillness like a sealed jar.
Then the seal broke.
The Thassarist envoy Halris was already on their feet, fists clenched at their sides, the pale grain-toned panels of their vestments rustling like dried husks. Their voice cut through the air — sharp, cultivated, and contemptuous.
“So the rot-priests now pass judgment on trade?” they spat. “Do Virellians fancy themselves judges of fields they’ve never sown?”
Another Thassarist — older, broader, marked by the sun-flecked pigmentation of the outer cultivars — joined them, slamming a fist into the curved rail.
“You call it delay,” they barked, “but we remember what Cindaros called our work last session: replaceable. Perhaps you’d like to harvest your hydrogen with wheat!”
Vel of Cindaros rose, unamused. “I didn’t say replaceable. I said dependent. You feed us, yes — and we build what you feed yourselves with. Or have you forgotten who maintains the ferry arrays?”
“No one eats welds,” snapped another Thassarist voice.
And then came more.
A Gravari delegate — hunched, austere — began murmuring into their conical translation loom, sparking auto-commentary that flitted into half the chamber through projection glyphs. A Silvarian released a sharp bloom of pollen-scented disapproval. A Netharian waved their hand for recognition, ignored it, and began speaking anyway in clipped, guttural bursts. Even among the Virellans, a new fragrance rose — not sharp, not hostile, but deeply fungal, the scent of wet warning.
“Order,” the Chancellor called, voice level.
They did not hear him.
Arguments cascaded over one another: demands for independent arbitration, accusations of sabotage, calls for food export audits, trade recalibrations, threats of embargo. And at the core of it, the ancient truth: no one moon could truly do without the others — and that was precisely what made them so vicious.
Finally, the Chancellor stepped forward into the center of the floor. His robe flared slightly with the movement, and the chamber’s acoustic net re-centered.
“Enough,” he said, louder this time.
The lights along the upper rotunda dimmed. Security drones pulsed to attention.
“Enough.”
The uproar stilled — not out of submission, but necessity.
He waited until the last voices retreated to silence.
From the western benches, a figure rose — slender, pale, and robed in the veined-black formalwear of Rheunon’s outer provinces. His hair shimmered copper in the filtered dome-light, bound back in a simple clasp. No projection flared to mark his name. It didn’t need to.
The Chancellor turned his gaze toward the speaker. “The floor recognizes the delegate from Rheunon.”
A slight bow — only slight. Then the voice, clear and precise, shaped by decades of rhetorical training:
“Chancellor, may I say for the record—purely for accuracy, and with no disrespect to the honored delegate from Virellia—that the clause in question is not from Ordinance 74.2.1, as cited, but from Ordinance 74.3.2, Concord-root clause, session twenty-nine-thousand-four-hundred-eighty-seven.”
He paused.
“The full citation reads: ‘In the event that an obligated provider of classified nutritive commodities fails to fulfill a scheduled delivery to a registered orbit-station, auxiliary depot, or formally dependent installation, and does so without documented transmission of delay notification within a window not exceeding forty-five Typharion days, the recipient party shall be entitled to impose a compensatory deduction of not less than forty percent of the contractual payment. Said deduction shall be deposited into a neutral escrow account overseen by Commonwealth Infrastructure Oversight, to be allocated for logistical remediation, sustenance stabilization, or structural mitigation at the discretion of the impacted recipient jurisdiction.’”
A few low groans curled from the benches — some resigned, others half-amused. A Gravari delegate muttered something into their translation loom. The chamber settled again, focused.“Further,” the Rheunarian continued, brushing a copper-toned lock from his brow with a gesture so casual it bordered on dismissive, “the statute has been upheld by precedent in Sessions 30,112; 30,404; and—most relevantly—Session 31,298, wherein a Cindari delegation invoked the same clause against Netharian hydrogel delays. It is, I believe, quite clear.”
He returned to his seat, folding his hands. Around him, murmurs resumed — not loud, but present, like the quiet tap of stylus to slate.
A Rheunarian never spoke to win the room.
Only to correct it.
The Chancellor inclined his head, the faintest crease of a smile brushing the edge of his otherwise impassive expression.
“My thanks,” he said evenly, “to the delegate. And your name, for the record?”
The speaker straightened but did not puff with pride. His voice remained even, crisp — more correction than assertion.
“Ax of Lioren,” he said simply.
A pause followed — just long enough for recognition to settle.
The Chancellor nodded again, when one of his aides leaned in from the shadowed edge of the dais. A few quiet words passed — confirmation, not instruction. The Chancellor’s gaze did not waver.
“It appears the citation was correct,” he said aloud, “word for word.”
The reaction was immediate.
Across the benches, a low chorus of groans rippled out — some theatrical, others begrudging. A few muttered phrases rose and fell: of course it was, should’ve known, Rheunarian don’t miss. Not a single delegate looked surprised. Only mildly irritated, like commuters delayed by a clock that was — infuriatingly — accurate.
Someone near the Silvarian ring emitted a sharp exhale, half-amused. Another adjusted the glyph-band on their wrist as if to signal we get it.
Because everyone knew: when a Rheunarian cited precedent, you didn’t fact-check. You footnoted.
And Ax — pale-skinned, copper-haired, draped in the mineral-scribed folds of his lunar house — remained where he stood, composed, unsmiling, and correct.
The Chancellor allowed the chamber to settle once more, though it took longer this time. A few last murmurs lingered like condensation on glass, then dispersed beneath his gaze.
“My thanks,” he said, “to all delegates who have spoken — and to those who have chosen, wisely, to refrain.”
He stepped forward again, hands loosely clasped behind his back in the formal posture of a judgment deliverance.“The facts, as presented and not contested, are as follows: Thassalor’s shipments to both Cindaros and the Gravari orbital platforms were delayed. This delay was unannounced, undocumented, and — by the delegate’s own admission — retaliatory.”
A stir ran through the chamber again, but no voices rose this time. The silence of confirmation carried more weight than protest.
“According to Ordinance 74.3.2, Concord-root clause, session twenty-nine-thousand-four-hundred-eighty-seven,” the Chancellor continued, his tone sharpening just enough to mark each clause with formality, “a forty percent reduction in contractual payment must be placed in a neutral escrow account overseen by the Commonwealth Infrastructure Oversight, to be allocated for logistical remediation, sustenance stabilization, or structural mitigation — at the discretion of the impacted recipient jurisdiction.”
He paused. The legal citation hovered in luminous glyphs over the rotunda’s center as the delegates prepared.
“Please cast your votes on whether Thassalor shall be required to comply with this ordinance.”
A flicker passed through the chamber — token bands glowing, hands raised or glyphs tapped in near-perfect synchronicity. The result blinked to life in gold numerals high above the Chancellor’s head.
70 — 10.As expected. The Thassarist bloc held their protest in digits alone.
The Chancellor did not flinch.
“Let the record show: the vote passes, and the statute applies. However,” he added, voice cooling only slightly, “to ensure proportional equity, and not punitive imbalance, the required restitution will not total eighty percent across both recipients. Instead, twenty-five percent of the payment owed will be allocated to each: Cindaros and Gravari.”
A few audible sighs rippled from the Cindari side. The Gravari remained characteristically silent.
The Chancellor let them have their silence, then continued.
“We do this not to punish, but to preserve. The Commonwealth endures only because its moons recognize interdependence. We rise — or collapse — together. Let this session be remembered not for grievance, but for restraint.”
His hands spread slightly, a gesture of closure.
“A second vote is now called — to approve the amendment in distribution. All in favor?”
A brighter pulse of color spread through the rotunda — swift and unanimous.
80 — 0.
The Chancellor inclined his head.
“Let the record show the precedent has been upheld, and modified with grace, during Session Thirty-Two-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-Ninety-Five.”
He looked out across the chamber.
“And let us now proceed.”
The Chancellor returned to the center, his voice steady once more, measured by the slow cadence of procedural transition.
“Before the floor opens to new petitions, there remains one matter of intermoon transit alignment to resolve—specifically regarding the recalibration of ferry vectors between—”A flicker.
It touched the edge of the dome like a stray pulse—brief, colorless, almost dismissible. He faltered only for a breath before continuing.
Then another.
This time, it struck more clearly—white, sharp-edged, not from the surface of Typharion nor any of the moons. Delegates turned their heads. One or two narrowed their eyes against the bloom. Someone murmured from the upper gallery.
The Chancellor paused again, his gaze lifting slowly to the sky-glass above. The etched constellations of the Typharion system gleamed faintly in their correct alignments—stable, constant. And yet, something shimmered behind them.
The third pulse was not a flicker.
It was a rupture.
Light sheared into the chamber—not gold, not violet, not any wavelength known to the system. It was light without origin, without angle, without shadow. A perfect white that consumed depth, space, and time. The dome vanished into it. So did the walls, the banners, the bodies.
For a moment, it felt as if the rotunda had been erased.
One delegate let out a startled cry before collapsing into their seat. A Silvarian beside them discharged a sharp burst of repellent scent—warning, defensive, immediate. Others shielded their eyes, too late. One envoy gripped the rail and did not let go, their mouth frozen in a silent invocation.
And then, just as suddenly, the light recoiled.
The chamber snapped back into being like a breath drawn after drowning. The dome wavered. The floor dimmed. The glyph-bands stuttered and blinked out. Some delegates blinked upward, as if trying to reassemble their bearings from the pieces of the sky.
The Chancellor moved with sudden, practiced authority.“Lockdown protocol—Senate seal—code: Forty-One-Gamma.”
The rotunda responded instantly. The dome above began to close, segment by segment, metal irises sealing off the sky. Walls pulled inward with a deep hydraulic murmur. Pressure locks engaged. The airflow thickened as internal circulation took over.
The lighting dropped to crimson.
Not alarm—alert.
A low pulse echoed through the chamber. Red light blinked against polished metal and ceremonial cloth, bathing every face in the same urgent hue. No one moved. No one spoke.
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