Alaric's defiance was a quiet tremor, not an earthquake. It did not topple Silverport's emerging edifice of Perceptual Accounting, but it sent a crack running through its foundation in Aethelburg. The city, already a place of defiant light, now held a different kind of rebel: one who had seen the inner workings of the machine and had chosen to step out of its gears.
He became an unlikely asset to the guild. His knowledge of Silverport's methods was not used for defense, but for deeper understanding.
"They will not send soldiers," Alaric explained, standing before a map of the region he had helped annotate. He pointed not to cities, but to trade routes and communication lines. "They will send more assessors, better trained to resist… persuasion." He said the word with a faint, self-deprecating smile. "Their strategy is capillary. They will infiltrate, measure, and then use economic pressure to encourage compliance. They will make it more expensive *not* to see the world their way."
