The other side of Reincarnation

Pieced together later, same as the Church’s other councils — what follows is the account we eventually gathered of how Selwyn actually responded to her knights’ report.

　Seraphiel delivered the account personally, three weeks after departing, the other three standing at careful attention behind her while Selwyn listened without interruption to every detail the four of them had gathered.

　”A barrier,” Selwyn repeated, once Seraphiel had finished. ”Large-scale. Deliberately maintained, not simply cast and forgotten. And you chose not to breach it.”

　”Per your explicit instruction, High Priestess,” Seraphiel said. ”Information first. We had no knowledge of its purpose or its maker. Entering blind, after already losing two units to that exact region, seemed a poor trade for information we could gather safely from outside it.”

Good instinct on her part. Doesn’t mean Selwyn’s going to be satisfied stopping there, though.

　Selwyn was quiet a long moment, turning the report over with the same careful, patient attention she’d given the original lost-unit ledger weeks earlier.

　”You made the correct call,” she said finally, and Seraphiel’s posture eased fractionally at the confirmation. ”A barrier of that described sophistication, in that specific region, tied to two lost units and elevated anomaly activity — this is not a matter four knights should resolve alone, regardless of skill.”

　”What would you have us do instead?” Aldric asked, blunt as ever, clearly hoping for something more active than simply filing a report and waiting.

　”Research,” Selwyn said. ”Before action. I want our archives searched thoroughly — any historical record of barriers matching this description, any account of territories that have simply vanished from reliable maps, any prior incident where our own scholars encountered something similar and successfully identified its nature.”

Smart. Genuinely smart, actually, in a way that should probably worry me more than it currently does.

　”Cassian,” Selwyn continued, ”you have the sharpest analytical mind among the four of you. I want you leading that research personally. Take whatever resources the archive requires.”

　”Understood,” Cassian said, something like genuine interest cutting through his usual measured tone.

　”And the anomaly cross-reference?” Selwyn asked, turning to the clergy member who’d been tasked with that specific work weeks earlier.

　”Inconclusive, so far,” he admitted. ”The timing of increased anomaly activity in the wider region does correlate loosely with the barrier’s likely construction — based on scout reports of when the area first became genuinely unmappable — but I have no direct evidence linking the two beyond timing alone.”

Timing alone is still more than I’d like them having. Loose correlation is exactly the kind of thread that eventually gets pulled tight, given enough patience.

　Selwyn considered that a long moment, weighing something behind her carefully composed expression.

　”Continue the research,” she said finally. ”Quietly. I don’t want this escalated to the wider Church hierarchy until we actually understand what we’re dealing with — premature action based on incomplete information cost us two units already. I won’t compound that mistake with a third.”

　”And if the research yields nothing?” Seraphiel asked. ”If the archives hold no answer?”

　”Then we return to direct observation,” Selwyn said. ”More carefully, next time, and considerably better prepared. Whatever’s out there has already proven capable of eliminating two full units without leaving a single survivor to explain how. I intend to understand exactly what we’re facing before I ever send anyone toward it again.”

　She dismissed the four of them shortly after, alone once more with the ledger of names that would never again answer any summons, and a growing certainty that whatever waited in that region deserved considerably more caution than her institution had shown it so far.

She’s patient. Methodical. Exactly the kind of opponent that doesn’t announce itself with dramatic gestures — just steady, careful pressure, building toward something eventually.

I don’t know yet how long her research takes, or what her archives actually hold. But I know, now, that she’s genuinely looking, and that’s not nothing to keep in mind, going forward.