"Institutions respond to threats according to their nature. Bureaucracies respond with protocols. Militaries respond with force. Divine governments respond with both, with the confidence of entities that have never been wrong before."
The Pantheon's first formal response to Ashenveil arrived not as soldiers but as paperwork.
This was, Vael noted in her message, exactly what she had expected and precisely as dangerous as soldiers, only slower.
The response took the form of an amendment to the Aethic Resource Management protocols, passed by the Seven Delegates in conference and filed in the provincial governance system as a supplemental regulatory update. The amendment created a new registration category: Unofficial Cultivation Outpost. Any gathering of more than ten cultivators not registered under a sanctioned institution was required to file for provisional recognition under this category, undergo an administrative review, and accept ongoing monitoring.
Failure to register: dissolution of the gathering by Order enforcement, classification of its members as unregistered Aethic practitioners, and potential extraction of any Hollowed individuals present.
The amendment was broadly worded. It was designed to be broadly worded. It captured not just Ashenveil but every Unmarked community, every informal cultivation group, every small cluster of people who had been cultivating outside the sanctioned framework.
Comprehensive. Elegant in the way of all good administrative overreach: the remedy cannot be targeted without appearing discriminatory, so it is written to apply to everyone, and the enforcement will be applied selectively to the things that actually threaten the institution. This is the Pantheon's first move. It is not a combat move. It is a classification move.
Vael's message continued:
The amendment was drafted by the Third Chair's office. Not Mole's. Mole abstained from the Delegates's vote, which is permitted under the oversight charter and which has produced internal commentary I am aware of. The abstention is noted in the administrative record and will be interpreted by those above him as a failure of loyalty. I am monitoring this.
A second message arrived the same day, from Theron at the Spire:
The amendment is on every Academy's administrative board. Matron Vor has asked me formally whether the Ashenveil Cultivation Research Outpost has been filed for registration. I have told her the land grant transfer included a standard five-year operating license under the existing framework and that the registration amendment applies prospectively rather than retroactively. This is technically accurate and will not hold for long. Recommend preparation.
✶
He called a meeting in the central hall that evening: himself, Seris, Yrenne, the two teachers, and the four oldest practitioners whose judgment he had come to trust over the past year.
He laid out the amendment plainly.
The response in the room had the quality of people receiving news that is not a surprise but is still unwelcome in the specific way of things you have been prepared for and do not want.
"Registration," said one of the teachers — a man named Corvus, fifty, who had been a university instructor before the Pantheon's thirty-year-ago administrative consolidation had eliminated his institution. "Registration means monitoring. Monitoring means the same infrastructure that the Hold used."
"Yes," Luceo said.
"And non-registration means enforcement action."
"Within the year, probably. Maybe sooner."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Seris spoke first, which was unusual in group settings — she preferred to listen longest and speak last.
"We are not registering," she said.
It was not a proposal. It was a statement of a position that had the quality of something decided already.
"Seris," Yrenne said quietly.
"Registration means the people here become visible to an enforcement system that has demonstrated what it does with visible Hollowed cultivators," Seris said. "I am not registering anyone in this building."
"If we don't register, the enforcement response could be larger than we can manage," Corvus said. "The Order of the Sunken Chain has provincial garrison support. The Aethic Guard responds to Pantheon directives. We have —"
"Twenty-three practitioners, twenty-six students, a Void cultivator, and a ruined hold's worth of operational intelligence," Seris said. "In a Void-saturated territory that degrades conventional Aether projection. On land that has been legally transferred under provincial authority." She looked at Luceo. "And an ally in the provincial administration."
Everyone looked at him.
She has already run this calculation. She has been running it since the amendment arrived. The question in her eyes is whether I agree with the conclusion.
"We don't register," he said.
Corvus looked between them. Then nodded. The nod of someone who has located the kind of certainty that is not comfortable but is correct.
"What do we do instead?" he asked.
"We get stronger faster than the enforcement response can scale," Luceo said. "We build something they cannot easily dissolve by the time they move to dissolve it. We use the time the amendment gives us — the processing period, the enforcement timeline — to convert this from a gathering into something that has roots."
He looked at the room.
"And we make sure that when they come — because they will come — we are ready to make the cost of coming here prohibitive."
The room was quiet.
Then Darra, who had not spoken, said: "The western wall needs an additional reinforcement layer. I can have it done in two weeks."
Someone almost laughed.
The meeting ended.
The preparations began.