"Sixty-one percent is still a failure," I say.
"Sixty-one percent is a significant improvement over eighty-seven. In a fight where the margin between survival and annihilation is measured in hours, a twenty-six percent improvement is the difference between the Heartwood standing and the Heartwood falling."
Rhyven leans forward. "What Torvel is trying to say, with his usual warmth and charm, is that we weren't keeping this from you to be cruel. We kept it because telling you too early gets people killed. Every time, without exception." His voice is unapologetic. "You in particular, Kaelren. The versions of you who learned early, went off-script every time."
I feel the muscles in my jaw tighten. He's right. I know he's right because I spent the entire night fighting the exact impulse he's describing.
"We understand," Elle says beside me. Her voice is steady, diplomatic. She puts her hand on mine under the table. "You did what the data told you to do. We're not here to argue about the past. We're here to figure out the next few days."
Thalia nods. The relief on her face is controlled but visible. She straightens in her chair, and the commander takes over from the daughter.
"The council briefed on the Cathedral's adaptive intelligence two days ago," she says. "Kaelren's assessment that the core is built from a version of himself changes our calculus. Torvel, where does that leave the strategic analysis?"
"It means direct assault, infiltration, and external magical disruption are all off the table," Torvel says. "The core will anticipate any approach that a trained military mind would generate."
"Which is everything we've tried for fifty-three cycles," Rhyven says.
"Yes."
"Then what's left?"
The room goes quiet. I feel the weight of all the previous failures pressing on the table between us.
Thalia speaks. "There's something I haven't shared with the full council before. Something about what I can do." She stands, and when she presses her palm flat against the table, her Root marks flare bright green threaded with dark veins. The table pulses in response, the living wood glowing where she touches it.
"I can anchor things," she says. "Through physical contact and focused channeling, I can lock something to the Rootline. Pin it to a fixed point in reality so it can't shift, can't adapt, can't rewrite itself."
"We know about your stabilizing ability," Irielle says. "You use it on the ward lines during every cycle."
"Ward lines are small. Static structures. I've never tried it on anything living, and I've never tried it at the scale of the Cathedral." Thalia lifts her hand from the table. The glow fades. "The Cathedral survives because it's constantly moving, constantly reshaping. It shifts between states of matter, between partial realities. It's never fully in one place at one time. That's why no one can reach the core. You can't hit something that won't hold still."
"But if you anchored it," I say, and the tactical implications unfold in my head faster than I can speak them.
"If I anchored it, the Cathedral would be locked in place. Physically present, fully materialized, and vulnerable." She pauses. "The core would be reachable."
"For how long?" Elle asks.
"I don't know. I've never done it. The ward lines take seconds. A structure the size of the Cathedral, with a living intelligence fighting back..." She shakes her head. "Minutes, maybe. If I can hold on that long."
"What's the cost?" I ask, because there is always a cost, and Thalia's face tells me she already knows what it is.
"Channeling that much power through my body would pull me loose from the timeline. Partially. The longer I hold, the more I lose my grip on linear reality." Her voice carries a heavy resolution. "I might flicker. Lose time. At the extreme end, I could destabilize entirely."
"Meaning you die," I say.
"Meaning I stop being present in a way that matters."
The table is silent. Irielle's marks have stopped pulsing. Rhyven sits back in his chair with the look of a man hearing something he suspected but hoped wasn't true. Torvel's pen is motionless.
"That's not acceptable," I say.
"It may be necessary."
"It's not acceptable." The words come out harder than I intend, and the temperature in the room drops two degrees. My corruption responding to the idea of my daughter sacrificing herself for a city I just learned she built.
Elle places a hand on my shoulder, gently pushing me back down into my chair, which I apparently rose from without thinking.
"Kaelren," Thalia says, and her voice is quiet and steady and so much like mine it makes my chest ache. "I'm not offering to die. I'm telling you what I can do, so that when we build a plan, we build it with all the information. Including the risks."
