Chapter 3 -- The Voice of Ashes
The chamber seemed to lean inward after the World Council moderator's words. Every head turned toward the minority delegation, and for a time nothing moved at all. The typewriters that had been rattling without pause slowed and fell quiet, their keys resting mid-stroke as if even the clerks understood this was no longer routine reporting but the edge of something that could tilt history. The rain pressed against the high windows with ceaseless rhythm, turning the grey light into sheets that blurred the outside world. Inside, breath itself felt heavy, as though the air had thickened.
The Union envoy allowed himself a small smile. He reclined slightly, shoulders sinking back into his chair, as if already certain that silence meant assent. The Central Union had made their case—guidance, development, the patient hand of collective wisdom. Surely these broken people would see reason.
Across from him, the Gaule delegation sat upright with the poise of men who knew opportunity when it hovered near, their fingers resting on folded papers but their eyes fixed keenly on the faces of the minorities. Markets and partnerships, they had offered. Capital instead of conquest. Surely that was more palatable than imperial domination.
The Federation general leaned forward, elbows against the table, hands locked so tightly together the knuckles shone pale, his gaze trying to will the old comrades he had once trained with to speak. The Southern Commonwealth's envoy tilted his head, a faint crease at his brow, as though weighing how deep the silence might stretch.
And at the minority table itself, the men and women did not stir. They sat with backs rigid, their eyes lowered at first, shoulders carrying an old weariness that came not only from the months of war but from decades of being treated as pawns in someone else's empire. Some had lost children. Others had walked through villages where not a soul remained alive. To the diplomats, they looked like stone—mute and unmoving—but their stillness was alive with calculation, with the patience of people who had learned that words too easily given could cost lives.
The silence stretched. Stretched until it became uncomfortable, until delegates shifted in their seats and observers craned forward. Still the minorities sat, unmoved, as though they were waiting for something the great powers could not understand.
At last, one figure pushed his chair back. The sound was not hurried, but it cut through the room like a blade against wood. He rose with the stiffness of years carried on his frame, a veteran whose face was mapped with scars and whose hands, when he placed them on the table, were thick and calloused from both command and labour. His movements were deliberate, unhurried, as though age itself gave him a right no one else in that hall could claim.
When he raised his head, his eyes swept the chamber not in supplication but in appraisal, as though he were weighing each delegate the way a soldier sizes an opponent before battle. And when he spoke, his voice carried not polish nor diplomacy, but the gravel of years lived close to death.
"I have heard enough."
The words were not loud, but they rolled across the chamber with a steadiness that silenced even the rustle of coats.
"You sit here," he continued, his hand spreading flat on the table, "and you speak of us as though we were already ghosts. As though the villages are only ash, and the people who crawled from the fire are shadows who need masters to tell them what to do. You trade our future like merchants at a market. You argue of debts and labour and legacies. And yet you forget the truth that no grave has erased—we are still here. We bled. We survived. We endure."
His gaze swept across the table, taking in each delegation with the methodical precision of a man cataloguing his enemies.
"For decades, you have spoken for us. The Central Union declared what we needed—their schools, their factories, their guidance. Never asking if we wanted to be guided. Never wondering if our own knowledge, passed down through generations, might have value. You built your railways through our forests, but did you ask the trees? You opened your schools in our villages, but did you learn our languages before you taught us yours?"
The Central Union envoy's smile had vanished entirely. His hands gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white beneath the skin.
The veteran's voice grew harder, each word a stone cast with deliberate aim.
"And when your guidance birthed monsters, when the regimes you inspired began devouring children, where were you then? Silent. Distant. Washing your hands of the consequences whilst we paid the price in blood. Your 'collective wisdom' became our collective grave."
Now he turned toward the Western side of the table—toward Gaule with their polished coats, toward the Federation with its uniforms, toward the Commonwealth with its restless, watchful gaze.
"And you, who wrap yourselves in the language of salvation, offer us what? Partnership, you call it. Investment. As though liberty were a commodity to be purchased on convenient terms. You speak of loans and markets as if they were gifts, when in truth they are chains forged of signatures instead of iron."
The Federation general shifted, his mouth opening, but the veteran raised one scarred hand. The gesture was not a plea but a command, and the general, after a heartbeat, closed his jaw and remained standing in silence.
"You think we are naive? You think we cannot see the patterns? First comes the loan, generous and well-meaning. Then comes the interest, compounding like a disease. Then come the conditions—our resources pledged as collateral, our policies shaped to suit your markets, our children educated in your image. And when we can no longer pay, when the debt becomes a millstone around our necks, then comes the kindly suggestion that perhaps foreign management might help. Partnership becomes oversight. Investment becomes occupation. And the chains, though gilded, are chains nonetheless."
His voice grew steadier, iron beneath the gravel, carrying now not anger but a weary certainty born of watching the same tragedy repeat across continents.
"Do you think we have not seen this play performed before? In the Western colonies, where minerals flow out and prosperity never flows in? In the Southern continent, where plantations stretch to horizons but the workers starve? Your markets are not salvation—they are sophisticated extraction, empire dressed in the language of economics."
The Gaule representative's face had darkened, his fingers drumming against the table. The Southern Commonwealth envoy leaned back, arms crossing, as if building walls against the accusations. But the veteran was not finished.
"You call this a failed state," he pressed on, his words gaining a rhythm that filled the hall. "And you are right. It failed because it was built on lies. Lies of empire. Lies of borrowed freedom. Lies that told us sovereignty could be granted by outsiders, that legitimacy could be purchased with foreign gold, that our own voices mattered less than the approval of distant capitals."
He straightened, shoulders squared, and his voice rose—not to a shout, but to a resonance that filled the chamber as if the rain itself had paused to listen.
"But no empire, no market, no federation ever built a nation here. Not truly. And none ever will. This land belongs to its people. Not to the Central Union. Not to Gaule. Not to the Federation or the Commonwealth. It belongs to the blood that has refused to vanish, to the clans and tribes who carried memory even when fire tried to burn it away."
His eyes swept the room one final time, meeting each delegate's gaze with unflinching certainty.
"If a nation is to rise from these ashes, it will not be born from your signatures or your investments or your guidance. It will be born from us. From our sweat, our sacrifice, our determination to stand upright in a world that has spent centuries trying to make us kneel."
The words dropped like stones into a still pool, and the chamber rippled with their force. Observers scrambled back to their typewriters, keys hammering in frantic bursts. Delegates leaned forward or back, faces tightening, postures shifting as though the floor itself had tilted beneath them. The rain crashed harder, drowning the echoes with its relentless roar.
The Central Union envoy surged to his feet, colour rising to his face, hands clenching the edge of the table. His voice came sharp and venomous, stripped of all diplomatic pretence.
"This is folly! Dangerous, ignorant folly! You speak of sovereignty as though it were earned by suffering alone, as though blood spilled is qualification for governance. But nations are not built on scars and sentiment. Without capital, without labour, without allies, without the infrastructure of civilisation, you will collapse into the same chaos that bred the slaughter! You defy not just us, but reality itself!"
The veteran turned his gaze upon him, unflinching, his expression a mask of stone carved by war and tempered by loss. When he replied, his voice was quiet, almost gentle, but it carried the weight of absolute conviction.
"Perhaps," he said simply. "Perhaps we will fall again. Perhaps the weight will prove too great, the burden too heavy. Perhaps we will stumble and bleed and fail."
He paused, letting the admission settle in the room like dust after an explosion.
"But if we fall, it will be on our own feet, not while kneeling on your leash. If we bleed, it will be our own blood, not the blood you demand as tribute. If we fail, it will be our failure, earned through our choices, our mistakes, our humanity—not your manipulation."
A silence followed so deep it seemed to draw the very breath from the room. Even the World Council moderator froze mid-note, pen hanging in the air. Gaule's representative sat forward, frowning, as if admiration and irritation warred inside him. The Federation general lowered his head, not in defeat but in acknowledgement, a soldier saluting a courage he recognised. The Southern Commonwealth leaned back, arms crossed, studying the minorities with fresh eyes.
And at the far end, the Crown Commonwealth's delegates remained inscrutable, their silence more dangerous than any speech. Only the Slavia Imperium stayed as they had been—watching, calculating, waiting to see which way the wind would blow.
The first spark had been struck, and though the rain battered the windows as if to smother it, the fire had already begun to catch.