After Arthur returned, the silence in the hall was no longer the silence of surprise, but the quiet stillness that follows great decisions. Everyone had exhausted their energy reacting to the previous appointments, and it seemed that all those present needed now was a fitting conclusion to tie all these threads together.
The problem had never been knowing what needed to be done. The names, the solutions, and the proposals had always been there. What was always lost was everything that came afterward; a decision would be made, only to stop somewhere along its path, as though the distance between making a decision and having it arrive were longer than the continent itself.
Orders were written, yes, but they stalled at the first hand that feared to carry them. Messages were sent, yet they never arrived with the speed they had been created for. The means that had been built to shorten distances had never disappeared—they still existed, used at times and neglected at others—until it seemed as though every city operated according to its own flow of time.
So it was not over yet.
The final appointment was not merely another name added to those before it. With a calm that matched the weight of the moment, every gaze turned toward Rei—not out of impatience, but in expectation of something everyone already understood. Everything presented so far—treatment that could save, construction that could restore, reforms that could set what had gone astray back in order—lacked neither clarity nor resolve.
It lacked only the road that would carry it where it needed to go.
Only then did Sislin move.
He opened the final ceremonial case and stepped toward the throne. Inside was neither ornament nor elaborate symbol, but the ministry's seal and two tools whose purpose was unmistakable: a pen engraved with "Step," and a key bearing the title "Pathfinder"—the emblems of the final ministry.
[Ministry of Transportation and Communications: The ministry responsible for ensuring that orders and troops arrive on time, overseeing the imperial postal carriages, imperial horses, merchant vessels, airships, and everything that maintains the Empire's supply lines between its cities.]
Rei raised his eyes and fixed them directly upon the chosen man.
[Swift Runner... Please step forward.]
No surprise followed.
The name had been expected to such a degree that the hall accepted it as one accepts a matter already decided. The man who had once held this responsibility simply returned to his position, without objection or any notable alternative.
The former minister—and the Head Mage of the Empire—showed no surprise. Among everyone present, no one possessed his understanding of transportation and transmission arrays, nor his ability to weave together ordinary routes and magical pathways into a single unified system.
The Empire had never lacked the means.
The gates still stood. The transport mirrors had never gone dark. The magical postal routes had never disappeared from the maps.
What had disappeared was the system itself.
Those tools were no longer used as parts of one network. Instead, they operated according to influence. They opened here and stalled there. They were activated when someone feared delay, and left dormant when an official feared making a decision.
Swift stepped forward at the call and stopped before the throne.
He offered a complete formal bow, neither exaggerated nor careless—a bow of acceptance, confirming the duty entrusted to him.
After receiving permission, he accepted the pen from Morgana as though receiving responsibility rather than decoration. Morgana acknowledged the appointment with a brief gesture, confirming it and bringing the ceremony to its close in the same motion.
Only then did he turn and quietly return to his place, neither hurrying nor slowing his pace, as though nothing had been added to the hall...
When in truth, the entire course of the Empire had just been reconnected through work whose effects had yet to begin.
Morgana returned to her seat.
She said nothing, nor was there any need to.
Her role had ended the moment she handed over the appointment. Everything that followed was no longer ceremony.
It was governance.
Silence settled over the chamber for a brief moment before Rei spoke.
He did not raise his voice, yet every word was deliberate, as though defining the boundaries of the next stage rather than explaining it.
«"What has taken place today does not change any of your standing within your respective territories. It simply reorganizes the way the matters connected to them are administered."»
«"The detailed administration—records, networks, taxation, organization, and public services—will be transferred to the Empire's institutions to be managed under a unified system. The territory itself, however, with its borders, authority, and course, will remain under the oversight of its lord, just as before."»
«"Nothing is being taken from your rule, nor is your role being replaced. Rather, it is being expanded. What was once managed independently will now become part of a broader structure that provides every territory with stable support in resources, organization, and consistency of decision-making. The Empire gathers the effort. You direct it according to your knowledge of your own lands—knowledge no one else possesses."»
«"Over the coming days, administrative transfer teams will arrive in every territory to assume the responsibilities being transferred. Your presence will not be symbolic, but supervisory. What will be measured after this meeting is not your attendance here, but what begins to function properly there."»
He paused for a moment, as though he could have said more...
But he did not.
This council was not the place for what would come afterward.
Then, in the same procedural tone with which he had conducted the meeting from the very beginning—a tone devoid of any ceremonial grandeur—he declared,
«"The Imperial Council is adjourned."»
Ray did not wait for his words to echo.
He rose immediately in a single decisive motion, as though the decision had existed from the beginning rather than having just been announced. He did not turn to see whether anyone had fully grasped what had happened, nor did he allow the chamber the customary moment that follows a formal conclusion...
That brief hesitation before everyone departs.
He denied them that moment altogether.
He turned toward the side imperial door.
Before he reached it, it swung open on its own, as though the guards had moved by anticipation rather than command.
Morgana rose at the very same moment—not after him.
Sislin and Rei moved together without exchanging so much as a glance, as though their positions had naturally shifted into another formation that required no order.
What followed could hardly be called an escort.
Their departure was simply a direct continuation of the council's adjournment, not an act that came after it.
The four of them passed through the doorway in perfect unison.
Then the door closed quietly behind them—not with the feeling of an ending, but with the quiet certainty that whatever came next had merely moved somewhere else.
Those who remained stayed in their seats for only a few moments.
Then the hall began to move.
They rose one after another, not in a single wave, but like workers leaving a workshop after their assignments had been distributed. There was no formal bustle marking the end of the session, no words of congratulations. Only swift, silent movement, occupied minds, and footsteps already heading toward the exits before the decisions made here had time to cool.
Swift left the hall as well.
The scene in the corridors was neither an orderly departure nor one that could be measured by any single rhythm.
It resembled the breaking of a barrier that had held back three hundred minds, all kept taut throughout the meeting, only to release them all at once into the stone passageways.
The voices did not rise immediately.
At first...
There was only that heavy silence.
The silence of people replaying everything they had heard, making certain it had truly happened.
Then came the first whisper.
"So... that's how it ended?"
"Ended? Or began?"
"And who is supposed to explain where it begins?"
"The administration is under the throne for now... That means every file will return to the capital."
"All of them?"
"Did you hear the word 'some'? I certainly didn't."
Some footsteps slowed, while others passed them by.
"And now the army stands as an independent pillar... Does that abolish the old chain of command, or simply add another layer to it?"
"Ask the Blade, if you dare."
"I'd rather stay alive."
"Security is the third pillar, identity the sixth... So who watches whom now?"
"Everyone watches everyone else, apparently. A wonderfully comforting design."
A trace of sarcasm slipped into the conversation, and no one bothered hiding it.
"Do we even have transition regulations?"
"No."
"Handover teams?"
"No."
"Operational procedures between the pillars?"
"No."
At last, they exchanged glances, as though they had all reached the same conclusion at precisely the same moment.
"So we've approved an entire system... before it's even been written."
"Was refusing ever really an option?"
"...Well, no."
That brief exchange broke apart before it could become a real discussion.
The moment they crossed the threshold of the hall, their pace no longer remained the same.
It was not an outright stop...
But a gradual slowing that spread from one person to another, as though movement itself had suddenly lost its destination.
Small groups formed without anyone intending them to.
Two people exchanged a sentence.
A third joined them.
A fourth merely listened.
It was neither an organized discussion nor an open objection.
It was simply a cautious attempt to understand what had actually happened.
"What about the Duke of the North?"
"..."
The answers stopped there.
Each person weighed their words before speaking, as though the decision itself might still change if spoken aloud.
The confusion did not lie in what had been said.
It lay in the empty space left by what had not.
No one described his departure as an expulsion.
Nor did anyone dare call it permission.
The same question passed silently from one pair of eyes to another whenever they looked toward the Dukes of the West, South, and East.
Had they truly accepted it?
Or had they simply chosen not to object when the moment came?
With that quiet uncertainty, everyone's attention gradually began to shift.
Not by agreement...
But the way the needle of a compass slowly turns toward a single direction.
No one called them.
No one openly suggested it.
And yet, their steps unconsciously carried them toward the row that had not existed yesterday...
The row of the Ten Ministers.
And there, for the very first time, it was no longer clear whether they were standing before a new administration...
Or before the center of power itself.
--------------------------
End of Chapter
---------------------------
[Side Information: The Duke of the North]
When the Duke of the North left the throne hall, he neither stopped nor looked back.
The sound of the doors closing behind him was quiet, yet final, as though his departure were not a reaction to what had happened inside, but simply another stage of a plan decided long beforehand.
The imperial corridor stretched before him, its lofty ceiling and stone arches seeming heavier than usual. Knights stood in perfectly ordered ranks on either side, their armor motionless, their spears unwavering, their gazes fixed straight ahead, until the corridor itself seemed built from silence rather than stone.
The sound of his footsteps was the only thing that disturbed the dignity of the place.
The stride of a man who knew exactly where he was going...
Not that of a man who had just walked out of a council.
In the main hall, where agents, merchants, and attendants mingled together, every whisper ceased the instant he appeared.
No one dared approach him.
He asked no one anything.
He merely raised one hand in a brief signal.
Two of his men immediately emerged from the crowd, like shadows that needed no summons.
"We're leaving."
His voice carried no explanation.
He continued through the inner courtyards toward the waiting carriages.
His own carriage was already prepared.
He stepped inside, his two men followed, and the door closed behind them without ceremony.
The carriage passed through the castle gates until it reached the Long-Range Transportation Plaza, where the great stone circles linked the capital to the Empire's provinces.
The plaza, however, was as silent as a graveyard.
No light shone from the engraved circles.
No magical energy stirred.
No attendants stood ready to activate them.
Everything had stopped.
The Duke cast a single glance.
It was enough to understand the entire situation.
He had not been granted authorization.
The gates would not be activated for him today.
He asked for no explanation and showed no sign of irritation.
The outcome had been expected to such an extent that it was not even worth a sigh.
He tapped the floor of the carriage once with his cane and gave the driver a single order.
"To the Northern Road."
The carriage turned away from the dormant transportation platforms and took the long stone highway leading toward the land gate—
The exhausting road usually traveled by merchant caravans...