Chapter 643: The Dismissal of the Dead

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.

The Garden would survive as an idea, waiting for another hand irresponsible enough to use it.

He lowered his hand.

"What authority works?"

Edras answered without hesitation.

"Sovereign authority of Vael. Marshal recognized by the Crown. Acting Commander-General of the Eastern Army. Formally invested replacement officer authorized to relieve a position."

Kael looked at Varon.

"You could have started with that."

"You asked who could dismiss them. The answer would normally be the sovereign."

"Normally hasn’t been a very useful word for us today."

Irelia was not there, but Kael could almost imagine the expression she would make.

Sylphie approached the table and studied the maps while Edras slowly moved several stone pieces across the old battle lines.

The four thousand dead already raised remained motionless outside the central circle.

They had not returned to the ground.

But they were not advancing either.

Farther below, however, Sylphie could still feel thousands of awakened contracts beneath the trees, as though the entire Garden had held its breath while waiting for a decision that should have been made nearly two centuries ago.

"Do those positions still exist?" she asked.

Edras turned his mismatched eyes toward her.

"No."

"The Eastern Army?"

"Extinct."

"Marshal?"

"Extinct."

"Vael?"

"Extinct."

Sylphie looked at Kael.

"Then the list of authorities capable of ending the order no longer exists either."

"Yes," Edras replied.

Kael tilted his head.

"Isn’t that another contradiction?"

The custodian remained still.

The page of the Garden of Bones floating beside Kael vibrated faintly.

Edras then answered:

"It is an absence."

"What’s the difference?"

"A contradiction is when two valid conditions cannot coexist. An absence is when a necessary condition no longer has an equivalent."

"You like complicated words for saying no one thought about what would happen if the kingdom ceased to exist."

"Correct."

Umbra appeared behind the table, leaning over the maps.

"I like him."

Kael looked at her.

"You like anything that gives dry answers."

"That’s why I like you."

Kael decided to ignore that.

Seraphine, who had remained silent until then, approached one of the maps.

Something about the arrangement of the borders seemed to bother her.

Her fingers moved over an old symbol placed above a fortification called Erenhal, then followed the line connecting the position to the former eastern command.

"Does a replacement authority have to be from Vael?"

Edras looked at her.

"It must be recognized by the contract."

"That wasn’t what I asked."

Kael gave her a small smile.

Seraphine noticed.

"Don’t start."

"I didn’t say anything."

"Your face..."

Sylphie covered her mouth to hide a laugh.

Seraphine turned back to Edras.

"If another authority possesses current jurisdiction over the soldiers, can it assume only the function of ending the contracts?"

The custodian went silent.

The inscriptions inside his eyes seemed to move.

It was not a metaphor.

Kael saw small traces of mana move across the brown iris and then the blue one while Edras consulted some part of the records composing his function.

"Possible."

Varon abruptly raised his head.

"No."

Everyone looked at him.

The restrained agent stepped forward until the chains limited his movement.

"If another authority assumes Vael’s military contracts, it creates continuity."

Kael understood immediately.

"In other words, we solve the dead and recreate the kingdom."

"Not necessarily the kingdom," Varon replied. "But some succession bond. If Meridia assumes the role of successor military authority, the Garden may recognize the city as heir to Vael’s obligations. That includes debts, treaties, disputed borders..."

Sylphie finished:

"And maybe other projects."

Varon nodded.

Kael slowly exhaled.

"Then we don’t assume the contracts."

"We need an authority," Seraphine said.

"Not to continue them. Only to end them."

The sentence was so simple that everyone remained silent for a few moments.

Kael turned toward her.

Seraphine continued, now looking at Edras.

"Is there a difference between succession and custody?"

The inscriptions in the general’s eyes began moving again.

"Yes."

"Explain."

"Succession receives the rights and obligations of the previous authority. Custody receives limited responsibility over something with no current holder."

Kael placed one hand on the table.

"And could a custodial authority dismiss them?"

"Only if the instrument expressly limits its competence to concluding the contracts."

Varon went still.

"That has never been attempted."

Kael looked at him.

"Today, that sentence is almost encouragement."

He pulled out the crystal and opened communication with Amelia.

The connection formed quickly, but Irelia appeared first, still seated in Meridia’s old hall with piles of documents around her and an expression saying the five minutes of silence she had demanded were long over.

"Did you solve it?"

"Almost."

"I don’t like that word."

"We found a path."

Kael explained the difference between succession and custody as Edras had defined it.

Irelia’s irritation gradually disappeared as she listened.

When he finished, she did not answer immediately.

She pulled out Meridia’s constitution, then two documents they had just created to end its legal dependency on Vael.

"It could work."

"But?"

"It has to come from Meridia."

Kael nodded.

"Because the Garden is in territory that currently belongs to the city?"

"Not exactly. The Garden is outside the current municipal boundaries, but the contracts tried to march toward Meridia, and the last sovereign connection pointed to the former capital. Besides, the city has just been recognized as a political community independent from the Crown. If any institution has legitimacy to assume temporary custody of these historical obligations without declaring itself Vael’s successor, it is Meridia."

Amelia appeared beside the image.

"We’ll need the council."

Kael grimaced.

"Now?"

"Now."

"The city just emotionally discovered that it is allowed to think about sovereignty, and you want to summon the council in the middle of the night to ask them to authorize the dismissal of seventeen thousand dead soldiers."

Amelia looked at him.

"Would you rather ask tomorrow after they start marching again?"

"No."

"Good."

Irelia was already gathering documents.

"We can’t hide what they’re authorizing."

Kael became serious.

"I don’t want to."

That was too important to resolve with another ambiguous clause.

The Voiceless Choir had turned silence into consent.

The Hollow Throne had survived because no one understood what authority they were recognizing.

Repeating the same pattern to end the Garden would only be a more convenient version of the problem.

"Explain enough for them to choose," Kael said. "The dead, the contracts, the risks, and the fact that accepting custody does not make Meridia the successor to Vael."

Irelia nodded.

"And if they refuse?"

Kael looked toward the thousands of trees beyond the circle.

"Then we find another solution."

Edras spoke:

"Refusal will be recognized."

Kael slowly turned toward him.

"You know, I’m really starting to like you."

"That does not alter protocol."

"Even better."

The communication remained open while Irelia and Amelia left the underground hall.

Violet sent two agents back to Meridia to reinforce the council’s security, but Kael made sure neither entered as a military force.

The meeting needed to remain civil.

The decision had to belong to them.

While they waited, Kael turned back to Edras.

"I want to understand something. Seventeen thousand contracts woke up. You said there are almost twenty-four thousand registered dead. What happens to the others?"

The custodian took a moment.

"They do not possess active contracts."

"So they stay buried."

"Not all of them."

Kael noticed the change immediately.

"Explain."

Edras placed one hand on the table.

One layer of the map disappeared, revealing another, much older one.

Thousands of small white points appeared scattered beneath the tree markers.

"After the Garden was created, the remains stopped being preserved individually."

Seraphine frowned.

"We already saw that."

"Not by accident," Edras replied.

Kael went still.

The custodian continued:

"It was determined that personal identity was not necessary for preservation of military function. Compatible bones were redistributed between units to replace incomplete structures."

Kael looked at the motionless soldiers outside the circle.

One person’s skull.

Another’s arms.

Ribs from two others.

Until then, he had assumed centuries of decay had mixed the remains.

No.

Someone had done it deliberately.

"Who decided that?"

Edras answered:

"First revision of the Garden. One hundred forty-nine years ago."

The page of the First Archive reacted.

A new line appeared.

PURPOSE ALTERATION RECORDED.

Kael moved closer.

"What was the original purpose?"

The page wrote:

PRESERVE REMAINS, MILITARY IDENTIFICATION, AND OATHS UNTIL RETURN TO FAMILIES OR FORMAL DISMISSAL.

Seraphine closed her eyes.

Sylphie went still.

Kael kept staring.

"Until return to the families."

Edras nodded.

"And after that?"

The page answered before he could.

LATER REVISION: PRESERVATION OF UNIT EFFICIENCY.

Kael felt his jaw tighten.

There it was.

The Garden had not been created to make dead soldiers.

It had been created to organize battlefields, preserve identifications, maintain still-active oaths, and allow the remains to eventually be returned to their families.

At some point, someone had decided that preserving people was less useful than preserving regiments.

And had turned the dead into material.

"Who authorized the revision?"

Edras looked at Varon.

Varon closed his eyes.

Kael did not need to ask twice.

"The Black Archive?"

"An authority derived from it," Varon replied.

"Oren?"

"Before Oren."

That made Kael fall silent.

The organization was older than that man.

Some of its corruptions were too.

Edras shifted another layer of the map.

"If the contracts are ended, units sustained exclusively by oath will lose cohesion."

"The bones fall apart," Umbra said.

"Yes."

"And then?"

The general looked toward the thousands of points spread across the map.

"No remaining system knows who they belong to."

The weight of that sentence was greater than the army.

Kael stared at the motionless soldiers beyond the clearing, and now every composite body stopped looking like a threat.

They were something else.

Hundreds of people dismantled and rearranged until even their own remains no longer belonged entirely to them.

Sylphie spoke quietly:

"Then dismissing them isn’t enough."

"No."

Seraphine clenched her fingers.

"We need to separate all of them."

Edras replied:

"Individual records incomplete."

Kael looked at him.

"But they exist?"

"Partially."

"How much?"

"Seven thousand four hundred eleven identities possess sufficient records for bone association above sixty percent."

"And the rest?"

"Fragmentary."

"Families?"

"Largely extinct."

Umbra went silent.

So did Violet.

Even Varon looked uncomfortable.

The page of the First Archive wrote another line:

INDIVIDUAL SUBJECT SUBORDINATED TO FUNCTIONAL CONTINUITY.

Kael stared at that sentence for several seconds.

It was almost the same disease he had found in the First Archive.

Person turned into record.

Record turned into function.

Function treated as more important than what it was supposed to preserve.

"That’s our proof," Sylphie said.

Kael nodded.

"But first we take them out of the war."

The crystal glowed.

Irelia appeared again.

Behind her sat seven people in a simple room.

They did not look happy.

They also did not look entirely convinced that anything they had heard that night made sense.

"Meridia Council," she said. "They heard everything."

Kael straightened.

A gray-haired woman looked directly at him through the transmission.

"You are Kael Scarlet."

"Yes."

"King of Witches."

Kael looked at Irelia.

She shrugged.

"It was relevant."

The woman continued:

"You want us to assume authority over a dead army."

"No."

The answer came immediately.

Kael moved the crystal closer.

"I want you to decide whether Meridia accepts temporary responsibility to end contracts that no living person authorized to continue. You do not receive the army. You do not receive Vael. You do not receive the Crown. You inherit no territory, debts, or old authority."

"What do we receive?"

"One thing."

Kael looked toward the motionless soldiers between the trees.

"The right to tell them they can stop."

The council remained silent.

This time, no one tried to fill it.

After everything they had faced, Kael knew better.

The choice needed to belong to them.