Part Seventy-Six — What Cassian Found

Pieced together later, same as the Church's other councils.

　Cassian spent the better part of two months buried in Laodicea's deepest archives — a section of the institution's records so rarely accessed that the archivist assigned to assist him admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she'd needed to relearn the cataloguing system herself before she could properly help him search it.

"Most of what's down here predates the current calendar system," she told him, gesturing at shelves of brittle, careful transcriptions. "Records of records, in some cases — copies made centuries after the originals crumbled, by scribes who may have taken some liberties we can no longer verify."

Fine. Imperfect sources are still sources. Better than nothing, given how little we currently understand.

　He found the first genuinely useful reference in a transcription nearly four hundred years old — an account of a "sealed grove," somewhere far to the west, that had apparently confounded Church scouts for a full generation before the seal in question was finally, deliberately breached.

Sealed grove. Confounded scouts. That's promising, if the parallel actually holds.

"How was it breached, in the end?" Selwyn asked, once Cassian brought the account before her properly.

"The text is frustratingly vague on method," he admitted, "but it does specify the seal's nature — dimensional in origin, similar in described function to what our own knights observed at the edge of the anomaly's territory. The account claims the eventual breach required a working called resonant disruption — essentially, matching a barrier's own frequency precisely enough to create feedback that destabilizes it from within, rather than attempting to overpower it directly."

Resonant disruption.

If that's accurate, and if it applies the same way to Absolute Sanctuary — that's a real vulnerability.

Not an easy one to exploit.

But real.

　Selwyn considered the account carefully, weighing its four-hundred-year vintage against the very real cost of acting on unverified information.

"Do we have anyone currently capable of performing a working like this?" she asked.

"Not currently within the Church's direct membership," Cassian admitted. "The technique described requires considerable expertise in dimensional magic specifically — a discipline we've never heavily invested in, historically. We would need to seek outside expertise."

"Outside expertise," Selwyn repeated, something calculating entering her expression.

"That complicates matters considerably. Bringing in someone outside the Church's own hierarchy, for a matter this sensitive, carries its own risks."

"There is a scholar," Cassian offered, carefully. "Independent. Reclusive, by most accounts, though genuinely regarded as one of the few living experts in dimensional theory. A woman named Ophelia Vance, last known to be operating out of a private tower somewhere in the eastern reaches of Ashford's own territory."

A name.

Another piece assembling itself, slow and careful, same as everything else about this investigation seems to be.

"Reach out to her," Selwyn instructed. "Discreetly. I want to understand what a working like resonant disruption would actually require, before we commit this institution to attempting it against something we still don't fully understand."

"And if she declines to assist?"

"Then we find another path," Selwyn said. "But I suspect a scholar who has spent her life obsessed with dimensional theory will find the prospect of an active, functioning barrier of this scale considerably more interesting than she'll find the risk of assisting us concerning."

　Cassian departed to begin that specific correspondence, and Selwyn sat alone a while longer with the four-hundred-year-old account, turning over everything it did and didn't say.

A scholar.

A technique with a name now, even if we don't yet fully understand its requirements.

Slowly, carefully, this institution is assembling exactly the kind of methodical approach that eventually breaks even the most well-constructed defenses.

I don't know yet how much further this particular thread will stretch before it actually reaches us.

But it's moving, steadily, the same patient way everything about Selwyn's approach has moved so far.

Whatever's coming, it's coming slowly enough that we still have time to prepare.

I intend to use every bit of that time properly.