# Chapter 60: The League's Demands
The silence in Lena's cellar was a living thing, thick with the scent of damp earth, old wine, and the coppery tang of Soren's blood. His breath hitched, a shallow, painful rhythm that was the only sound breaking the stillness. Nyra's confession had stripped the air bare, leaving them exposed in the flickering lantern light. She knelt on the hard-packed dirt, the smooth communication stone a cold weight in her palm, its faint inner luminescence a stark contrast to the grim reality surrounding them. Soren's gaze was fixed on her, not with the fire of anger she'd expected, but with the hollowed-out weariness of a man who had seen the last of his certainties crumble to ash.
He shifted, a wince tightening his face as the movement pulled at his battered ribs. "So that's it," he rasped, his voice dry and brittle. "A Sableki. All this time, you were just… gathering intelligence." It wasn't an accusation, but a statement of fact, a final nail in the coffin of his trust.
"I was," she admitted, the admission tasting like poison. "But that's not all I was. You have to believe that." She looked down at the stone, its surface cool against her skin. The choice was no longer hers to make. Their survival now depended on the cold, calculating entity that had sent her here in the first place. "We can't stay here, Soren. The Inquisitors will turn this city upside down. Lena's favor buys us time, not safety. I need to call in a resource."
He didn't respond, but his eyes followed her as she rose and moved to the far corner of the cellar, away from the rickety stairs leading up to the tavern. She knelt again, placing the communication stone on a small, flat-topped barrel. With a practiced touch, she pressed a sequence of faintly glowing runes etched into its side. The stone hummed, a low, sub-vocal thrum that vibrated through the wood and into the floor. A soft, blue light emanated from it, casting her face in an ethereal glow. She took a steadying breath, the air tasting of dust and desperation. "Talia," she said, her voice clear and steady despite the tremor in her hands. "It's Nyra. I need an extraction. Code Black."
For a long moment, there was only the hum. Then, a voice, sharp and crystalline, sliced through the silence from the stone. It was Talia Ashfor, her handler, and the sound was so devoid of warmth it felt like a physical blow. *"Extraction? Nyra, your mission was reconnaissance, not a city-wide manhunt. Report. Now."* The voice was clipped, each word a precisely measured shard of ice.
"My cover is compromised," Nyra stated, keeping her own voice level. "The target, Soren Vale, was identified by Inquisitor Isolde. We were ambushed. We escaped, but we are exposed. The Synod knows a Sable League operative is involved. They're calling him a heretic. The hunt is active and city-wide."
A pause stretched, so long that Nyra wondered if the connection had been severed. The blue light of the stone seemed to dim, as if in response to the cold fury on the other end. *"Compromised,"* Talia repeated, the word dripping with contempt. *"You were instructed to observe. To gather data on the Vale asset's potential and his connection to the Bloom prophecy. Not to become his guardian angel. Do you have any idea what you have done? You have linked the League to a fugitive, a man the Synod has marked for termination. You have jeopardized years of careful positioning."*
"The positioning was a lie," Nyra shot back, a flash of her own anger breaking through her composure. "The Synod isn't just consolidating power, Talia. They're building something. The Divine Bulwark. It's real, and it's a weapon. They're going to use it to enforce their will, to break the Concord. Vale is the key to understanding it, maybe to stopping it. I couldn't let them burn him."
*"Your sentimentality is a liability,"* Talia's voice returned, colder than before. *"The League does not invest in liabilities. You are officially disavowed. Your family's name will not shield you from this failure."*
The words struck Nyra with the force of a physical blow. Disavowed. Cast out. It was the fate she had feared most, worse than death. She was a ghost, her resources severed, her identity a curse. She risked a glance at Soren. He was watching her, his face unreadable, but she could see the flicker of understanding in his eyes. He was hearing his own death sentence being delivered alongside hers.
*"However,"* Talia continued, her tone shifting from fury to a chilling pragmatism, *"the asset himself still possesses value. The situation has changed, but the objective remains. The League is willing to offer a single, conditional lifeline. For him. Not for you."*
Nyra's heart hammered against her ribs. "What are the terms?"
*"Soren Vale will agree to a formal, binding alliance with the Sable League. He will become an operative, his actions and his Gift directed by our interests. He will no longer be a free-climber on the Ladder; he will be our weapon. If he agrees, we will provide extraction from the city, new identities, and the resources to continue his fight against the Synod—under our banner."*
"And if he refuses?" Nyra asked, though she already knew the answer.
*"Then you are both on your own. The League will disavow all knowledge of you. We will even provide the Synod with your last known location as a gesture of goodwill. It is the only way to sever the connection cleanly."*
The cruelty of it was breathtaking. They would be sacrificed, not just abandoned, but actively fed to the wolves. Nyra felt a wave of nausea. This was the family she had served, the cause she had believed in. It was all just business.
"There's more," Talia's voice continued, relentless. *"This is not a gift. It is a contract. His first mission will be his initiation. He must prove his value immediately. We require a full data-slate on the Divine Bulwark. Not fragments, not rumors. The complete schematic, the roster of personnel, the resource allocation. We have intelligence that a primary data-slate is held at a Synod records outpost in the Old Quarter. It is a hardened facility, but the security is focused on data integrity, not on repelling a direct assault. It is a test. Retrieve the slate, and the contract is sealed. Fail, and the deal is void."*
The Old Quarter outpost. Nyra knew of it. It was a stone fortress of a building, nestled in a maze of narrow, forgotten streets. It was considered a low-priority target, a place for dusty archivists and paper-pushers. But Talia was right; its defenses would be subtle and absolute. A suicide run for two wounded fugitives.
*"You have one hour to deliver his answer,"* Talia concluded, her voice final. *"The extraction window is brief. Do not contact me again until you have his decision."*
The blue light in the stone died, plunging the corner of the cellar back into shadow. The silence that rushed back in was heavier than before, laden with the weight of the ultimatum. Nyra remained kneeling for a long moment, the cold of the stone seeping into her bones. She had gambled on the League's pragmatism, and she had won, but the price was Soren's freedom. She had traded one cage for another, a gilded one for a barbed one.
She pushed herself to her feet and walked back to where Soren lay. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn't asleep. He was processing, weighing the options that were not really options at all. She knelt beside him, the lantern light catching the grim set of his jaw.
"The League is offering you a choice, Vale," she said, her voice devoid of its earlier warmth, now all business. She had to be. She had to be the cold, calculating agent Talia wanted her to be, because it was the only way either of them would see the sunrise. "The Synod's cage, or our leash. Which one do you prefer?"
He opened his eyes. They were clear, the pain and exhaustion momentarily burned away by a stark, lucid fire. He stared at the low, wooden beams of the cellar ceiling, a bitter, humorless smile touching his lips. "You have a way with words, Sableki." He turned his head slowly to face her, the movement costing him a visible effort. "A cage or a leash. Is that all the world has to offer a man like me?"
"It's what's on the table," she replied, her voice flat. She couldn't offer him comfort. She could only offer him the truth of their situation. "The Synod will torture you for information, then execute you as a heretic. Your family's debt will be called in, and they will be sent to the labor pits. That is the certainty of the cage."
He absorbed that, his gaze unwavering. "And the leash?"
"You work for us. For the League. Your fight against the Synod becomes our fight. You'll have resources, allies, a purpose beyond just surviving the next day. But you will follow orders. Your first order is to steal a data-slate from a fortress filled with Inquisitors and their cronies. You succeed, you get to keep fighting. You fail, we cut you loose and the Synod gets you anyway."
He let out a slow, ragged breath. "So, a suicide mission for the chance at a different kind of death later."
"It's a chance," Nyra countered, a spark of her own conviction returning. "It's more than you had an hour ago. It's a way to hit back. To actually hurt them. That data-slate… it could expose everything. It could be the key to unraveling the whole rotten structure."
Soren was silent for a long time, the only sound the drip of water from a pipe somewhere in the darkness. He thought of his mother, his brother, their faces etched with the hardship of their lives. He had entered the Ladder for them, to buy their freedom. He had fought and bled and broken himself for that single goal. Now, that goal was a distant dream, a casualty of a war he hadn't even known he was fighting. The path was gone. In its place were two impossible choices.
He looked at Nyra, at the dust on her cheeks and the fierce determination in her eyes. She had lied to him, used him, and betrayed him. But she had also saved his life, more than once. She had thrown away her own future to give him this one, terrible choice. They were bound together now, not by trust, but by shared ruin.
"My Gift is spent," he said, his voice low. "I'm broken. What use am I to you on a mission like that?"
"You're the reason I'm here," she said simply. "And you're the only one who can walk into a Synod outpost and not immediately be flagged as an intruder. You're still Soren Vale, the Ladder fighter. A disgraced one, but still one of them. I'm the ghost. We'll find a way. We always do."
He closed his eyes again, the weight of the decision pressing down on him. The Synod's cage. A cold, final end. Or the League's leash. A gilded collar, a life of service, but a life. A chance to fight, to maybe, just maybe, make a difference. To protect his family by tearing down the system that threatened them, not by paying its price.
He thought of the Bloom-Wastes, of the raw, untamed magic that had scarred the world. His own Gift was a fragment of that, a dangerous, volatile power. The Synod wanted to control it, to weaponize it. The League wanted to use it as a tool. Neither wanted him to be free. But one path offered a fight. The other offered only an end.
He opened his eyes. The decision was made. It wasn't a good one. It wasn't even a hopeful one. It was simply the only one that wasn't surrender.
"Tell Talia," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Tell her I'll wear her damn leash."