# Chapter 601: The Soren Protocol
The formal session had dissolved, the council members departing in a rustle of silks and the heavy tread of armored boots, leaving behind a silence thick with unspoken consequences. But the work was just beginning. In the cavernous Triumvirate Council Chamber, three figures remained, islands of light in a sea of shadow. The great oaken table, scarred with the history of a thousand treaties and betrayals, was now their war room. Candles flickered, their flames dancing across the sprawling map of the wastes, casting long, monstrous shadows that seemed to writhe like the Bloomblights themselves.
Nyra stood, her hands braced on the table's edge, the polished wood cool beneath her palms. The anchor flower, nestled in a small, lead-lined box beside her, seemed to thrum with a faint, almost imperceptible energy, a constant, low-frequency hum against her senses. The grey veins within its petals looked like a roadmap to a broken soul. Prince Cassian sat opposite her, the weariness of the day etched around his eyes, but his posture was one of renewed purpose. He had shed his formal council robes for a simple military tunic, the transformation from prince to commander complete. Isolde, her bandaged wrist resting carefully on the table, leaned forward, her sharp gaze dissecting the intelligence reports Talia Ashfor had begun funneling in through secure channels.
"The Synod's 'consideration' is a leash," Isolde stated, her voice devoid of its usual deference, sharpened by pain and purpose. "Valerius will not let this proceed unmonitored. The Inquisitor he assigns will be his eyes, his ears, and potentially, his blade."
"Let him watch," Nyra countered, her voice flat and cold. "We will give him something to see. A protocol so vast, so complex, that his single spy will be lost in the noise. He wants to oversee? We'll bury him in paperwork and strategy." She straightened up, her finger tapping a point on the map where Talia's scouts had reported a new, unusually stable Bloomblight. "This isn't about hiding from him. It's about moving so fast he can't possibly keep up."
Cassian nodded, his agreement a silent, solid weight in the room. "She's right. We need to establish the structure now, tonight. Before Valerius has time to regroup and set his own traps. We have the authority of the Crownlands and the resources of the Sable League. We must use them before he finds a way to rescind them." He slid a fresh sheet of parchment across the table, a royal seal already stamped in the corner. "Consider this the founding charter. What do we call it?"
Nyra didn't hesitate. "The Soren Protocol."
The name hung in the air, stark and absolute. It was not a mission, not an operation. It was a declaration. A set of inviolable rules designed for one purpose and one purpose alone. It transformed their desperate hope into a military objective, a problem to be solved with logistics, strategy, and overwhelming force.
"Alright," Cassian said, picking up a quill. "The Soren Protocol. Let's build it. Two primary branches. Intelligence and Acquisition."
"Intelligence first," Isolde said, pulling a stack of coded messages toward her. "We're flying blind. Talia's network is good, but it's designed for espionage, not for tracking metaphysical anomalies. We need to re-task her entire operation. Every agent, every informant, every shadow-market contact in the wastes needs to be looking for one thing: patterns."
"What kind of patterns?" Nyra asked, her focus narrowing.
"Bloomblights are normally chaotic, mobile, driven by the raw, unthinking hunger of the wastes," Isolde explained, her mind clearly working through the Synod's own tactical doctrines on the subject. "But these fragments… they are pieces of Soren. They are anchors of consciousness, of memory. They might not be random. They could be drawn to places of significance. Places he knew, places he felt strong emotion. Or, and this is more likely, they are acting as focal points, drawing the ambient Bloom energy toward them, creating these stable, fortress-like blights."
"So we're not just looking for a storm," Nyra murmured, understanding dawning. "We're looking for the eye of the storm."
"Exactly," Isolde confirmed. "We need to map every known Bloomblight, cross-reference it with pre-Bloom maps, caravan routes, any historical data we can find. We're looking for anomalies. Blights that form over old battlefields, over ruins, over places with a strong psychic resonance. That's our first step. And for that, we need the best spymaster in the known world."
"Talia Ashfor," Cassian said, writing the name on the parchment. He looked up at Nyra. "Can she be trusted with this? With the full truth?"
Nyra's gaze was steady. "She's been my handler since I first entered the Ladder. She knows my worth, and she knows the League's ambition. She believes the Synod is a threat to their dominance. This is the perfect opportunity for her to strike a blow against them while securing an immeasurable asset for the League. She will do whatever it takes. Her loyalty is to the League, and right now, the League's interests and ours are perfectly aligned."
"Then she's our Head of Intelligence," Cassian declared, underlining the name. "She gets full access to the Crownlands' archives and a blank slate for operational funding. I'll authorize it personally." He dipped the quill and began to write, the scratch of the nib on parchment the only sound in the vast chamber. He was creating a new branch of government, a new military arm, with a few strokes of a pen. "That leaves Acquisition. The strike teams."
This was the more difficult problem. The Crownlands' soldiers, the Synod's Templars, even the League's mercenaries—they were trained for one thing: to destroy Bloomblights. To burn them out with purifying fire, to shatter their cores with blessed steel. That would be a death sentence for Soren's fragments.
"We can't use standard forces," Nyra said, voicing the thought they all shared. "Sending in a Templar squad would be like trying to perform surgery with a broadsword. They'll obliterate the fragment before they even realize what it is."
"We need a new kind of soldier," Isolde added. "And a new kind of commander. Someone who understands restraint, who can follow orders that go against every instinct they've been taught. Someone who can hold a line not to kill, but to contain."
The name settled between them, unspoken but understood. There was only one man who fit that description. One man who had trained Soren, who understood the weight of a Cinders Cost, and whose loyalty was not to a flag or a god, but to the man they were trying to save.
"Captain Bren," Nyra said softly.
Cassian's head lifted. "The grizzled old veteran from the Ladder? The one who taught Soren to fight smart, not just hard?"
"The same," Nyra confirmed. "He's retired, serving as a tactical advisor to a minor garrison on the border. But he's the only one I'd trust with this. He knows Soren's fighting style, his tactical mind. If anyone can recognize a fragment of Soren's will in the chaos of a Bloomblight, it's Bren. And he has the discipline to hold his people back."
"He's also a man who despises the Synod and holds no love for the nobility of the Crownlands," Isolde pointed out pragmatically. "He won't do this for patriotism or for god."
"He'll do it for Soren," Nyra said, her voice firm. There was no doubt in her mind. "And he'll do it because he's a soldier who has spent his life watching good men die for bad causes. This is a good cause."
Cassian considered it for a long moment, then nodded decisively. "Then he's our Field Commander. I'll dispatch a royal rider tonight. We'll give him authority to hand-pick his team from any branch of the military. No questions asked. His unit will be designated 'Reclamation Team One.' Their mission parameters will be unique: locate, secure, and extract. Not destroy."
The plan was taking shape, a skeletal framework of a grand design. Intelligence, led by Talia, to find the targets. Acquisition, led by Bren, to retrieve them. And at the top, overseeing it all, was her.
"The protocol needs a failsafe," Isolde said, her expression grim. "What happens if we secure a fragment, and it's… corrupted? What if the Withering King has already twisted it? What if bringing it back is exactly what it wants?"
The question hung in the air, a chilling possibility that none of them wanted to confront. The anchor flower on the table seemed to grow colder, its faint hum turning sinister in Nyra's mind. She thought of the Withering King, a being of pure, corrosive magic. Of course, it would booby-trap the pieces of its greatest enemy.
"We'll deal with that when we come to it," Nyra said, her voice hardening with a resolve that felt like forged steel. "Our first priority is to get the pieces back. Together. Whatever state they're in, we will face it together. We don't abandon him. Not now, not ever."
Her declaration left no room for argument. It was the core tenet of the protocol, the one rule from which all others would flow.
Cassian finished writing, the charter now a dense document of orders, authorizations, and designations. He sanded the ink, his movements precise. "It's done. The Soren Protocol is officially active." He looked at Nyra, a flicker of the old camaraderie in his eyes. "Now, we just need a target."
Isolde slid the latest report from Talia's network across the table. It was a hastily sketched map, overlaid on a pre-Bloom chart. A massive, swirling red circle dominated the center of the wastes, far larger and more concentrated than any of the other blights. It was a nexus of power, a storm that refused to move.
"Talia's agents call it the 'Maw of Silence'," Isolde said. "It's been stationary for a week. It devours everything that comes near, but it doesn't expand. It just… sits there. And it's growing denser."
Cassian's finger, stained with the dust of old scrolls, traced a line from the capital to the point at the heart of the red circle. His eyes widened as he recognized the location from the ancient maps he'd been studying. "The Sunken Library of Aeridor," he said, his voice low and filled with awe. "Before the Bloom, it was the greatest repository of knowledge in the world. Legends say it held scrolls from the First Age, theories on the nature of magic itself."
Nyra's eyes met his across the table, the grey veins in the anchor flower seeming to pulse in the candlelight. A library. A place of knowledge, of memory. Of course, a piece of Soren would be drawn there. It wasn't just a search party anymore. It was an assault. The first piece of Soren was waiting for them at the bottom of the world, guarded by an army of nightmares.
"Send the orders," Nyra commanded, her voice ringing with the authority of her new role. "To Talia. To Bren. Tell them Reclamation Team One deploys at dawn. Their first objective is the Sunken Library of Aeridor."
Cassian took up a fresh sheet of parchment, the royal seal ready. He looked from Nyra's determined face to Isolde's tactical focus, and for the first time in months, he felt a surge of something he hadn't dared to feel for a long time. Hope. It was a fragile, dangerous thing, but it was there. They had a plan. They had a target. They had a name for their war. The Soren Protocol had begun.