The wounded wolf from the patrol didn't die. He lay in a med-pod, his body knit together by the silent, efficient work of Unified technology, but his eyes held a hollow, distant look. The shock of the ambush, the sudden, clinical efficiency of the attack—it had been more like a culling than a fight. The Mountain's first blood had been spilled not in glorious battle, but in a cynical, deniable strike.

Ronan left at dawn with his team: two Silverfang veterans, a Southern scout for subtlety, and, at Kael's specific instruction, a young, sharp-eyed Crimson Paw warrior named Rask. The inclusion was a message to Grynn and a test for the Crimson Paw's new role. They carried a formal scroll of condemnation drafted by Elias with Nabil's input—legalese wrapped around a core of steel. They also carried a portable med-kit and a single, gleaming shield emitter, set to non-lethal demonstration mode.

The Timber-Fang border post was a fortified log structure perched on the edge of the taiga, where the trees began to thin into tundra. Ronan's approach was announced not by stealth, but by the crunch of boots on frozen ground and the visible, purposeful stride of his delegation. Timber-Fang sentries, burly bear and wolf shifters in bronze-studded leather, watched them come, weapons held loosely but ready.

The post commander, a grizzled bear-shifter with a scar across his muzzle, met them outside the gate. "Beta Ronan. You're a long way from your frozen library."

"We're here under Article Seven of the Awakened Mountain Compact," Ronan stated, his voice flat and carrying. He unrolled the scroll. "Regarding the unprovoked attack on a sovereign patrol of the Mountain in neutral territory three days past. Two dead, one wounded. The attackers used advanced weaponry traceable to surplus markets. We formally condemn this act and demand the Timber-Fang Alliance, as a signatory to the principles of territorial integrity, publicly repudiate these bandits and cooperate in a joint investigation."

The commander's face went from wary to incredulous. "You come to my gate to accuse us? Your patrol was probably poaching. Got what it deserved."

Ronan didn't blink. He handed the scroll to the man. "The accusation is formal. The demand stands. Furthermore," he gestured to the med-kit, "in the spirit of the Compact's provision for mutual aid, we offer medical assistance. Our intelligence suggests your own patrols have suffered 'bandit' activity in this sector. We have advanced trauma equipment."

It was a masterful gambit. It forced the commander to either admit his people were also being harassed (validating the Mountain's claim of a third-party threat) or refuse help for his own wounded, looking both cruel and weak.

The commander spluttered, glaring at the scroll as if it were a live serpent. "I have no authority to… Borlug will hear of this insult!"

"He will," Ronan agreed. "The formal condemnation is being broadcast continent-wide as we speak. Along with the serial numbers of the rifles used." He paused, letting the implication sink in—anyone with access to Citadel surplus records could potentially trace them. "We will await your Alpha's formal response at the Mountain. In the meantime, the offer of medical aid remains. Do you have wounded who need it?"

Trapped, humiliated, and outmaneuvered, the commander could only snarl and order the gates shut. But the message had been delivered, publicly and with witnesses. Ronan's team turned and walked away, the shield emitter on Rask's arm glinting in the weak sun, a silent promise of the power behind the words.

---

Back at the Mountain, Finn was a man possessed. The serial numbers from the recovered rifle fragments were his holy grail. He'd spliced into every data-stream, black-market log, and Citadel procurement record he could find. The numbers were old, from a batch decommissioned five years prior after the "Grey Valley Insurrection."

"Officially," Finn reported, his eyes bloodshot from staring at screens, "they were melted down for scrap. But the melt-certificates are… fuzzy. Signed off by a quartermaster who 'retired' to a very nice villa on the southern coast. The trail goes cold there, but the path leads straight back to a Citadel military disposal office."

It was circumstantial. But it was a thread.

"We pull it," Lyra said. They were in the broadcast studio—a small chamber Finn had rigged with Vault audio pickups. "Tonight. On the Voice. We don't accuse the Citadel. We tell a story. 'The Mystery of the Grey Valley Rifles.' We present the facts. The serial numbers. The melt certificates. The retired quartermaster. We ask our listeners: what do they think happened?"

It was journalism as a weapon. It turned the Mountain from a victim into an investigator, and the continent into its audience.

That night, Finn's voice was different. Gone was the casual diary tone. It was sober, precise.

"Voice of the Mountain, Special Report. Three days ago, two of our pack brothers were killed with weapons that shouldn't exist. Here is what we know…"

He laid it out, cleanly, without editorializing. He ended with, "The Compact is built on transparency. So we are sharing this with you. If you have information, if you recognize these numbers, the secure channel is open. The Mountain seeks answers, not vengeance. Yet."

The word yet hung in the air, a tiny, controlled detonation.

---

The reaction was faster than anyone expected.

The first response didn't come through the secure channel. It came via an old-fashioned, physical message run. A human courier, shivering and scared, arrived at the outer perimeter just after midnight, bearing a sealed data-chip. It was for Commander Shale.

Shale viewed it in the privacy of her quarters, then requested an immediate, private audience with Kael and Lyra. Her granite face was, for the first time, etched with something that looked like genuine anger.

"The rifles," she said without preamble, placing the data-chip on the table in their quarters. "They were part of a lot 'misplaced' by the quartermaster in question, a man named Prell. He was acting on the orders of a faction within the Citadel's War Council that disagrees with my… diplomatic approach. They provided them to Timber-Fang intermediaries as a 'gift,' to stir up trouble, to test your resolve and discredit my mission."

She was giving them the enemy, served on a platter. A faction within her own government.

"Why tell us?" Kael asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

"Because Borlug is a blunt instrument. These men in the Citadel are not. They see the Mountain not as a threat to be fought, but as a virus to be controlled. If they can't control it through me, they will try to corrupt it, or force it to become the very thing they fear—a militarized, aggressive state—so they have an excuse to crush it. By giving you this, I cut their deniability. I force the conflict into the open, within my own government. It is in my interest, and the Citadel's official interest, that the Compact succeeds as a stable, peaceful entity."

It was a breathtakingly cynical and honest piece of realpolitik.

"What do you want in return?" Lyra asked.

"Two things. First, you delay any further broadcast about the Citadel connection for forty-eight hours. Give me time to present this evidence to the full Citadel Senate and purge the faction. Second, when you do broadcast, you make it clear this was a rogue element, and that you are continuing to work productively with the legitimate Citadel delegation—with me."

She was asking them to be partners in her internal power struggle. To help her clean house.

Kael and Lyra exchanged a look. It was a risk. Trusting Shale was like trusting a glacier not to calve. But her logic was sound. An internal Citadel fight was better than a unified Citadel hostility.

"Forty-eight hours," Kael agreed. "And we get to review the broadcast statement about the 'rogue element' before it goes out."

Shale nodded. "Acceptable."

After she left, Lyra slumped. "It never ends, does it? Just different layers of the same fight."

Kael pulled her to him. "This is the fight we chose. Not for territory, but for the right to build something. That makes the enemies sneakier. It doesn't make the fight less worthy."

Two days later, the Voice of the Mountain aired another special report. It stated that after a joint investigation with the Iron Citadel's legitimate diplomatic corps, it had been determined the rifles were sourced through a corrupt, now-disgraced quartermaster acting without official sanction. The Citadel condemned the attack. Several senior members of their War Council had been arrested.

The broadcast thanked Commander Shale for her cooperation. It was a victory, but it tasted of ashes and backroom deals.

More importantly, the broadcast announced that the joint mining venture with the Sun-Kissed Sands would break ground at the Singing Canyons at the next new moon, and that the first harvest of frost-root and tundra tubers, guided by the Ice-Maw elders, had yielded enough to supplement the fungal stores for a month.

They had weathered the first storm. They had answered whispers with a shout, an ambush with ruthless diplomacy, and a covert provocation with a public, messy alliance.

That night, the council met again. The mood was somber but resolved.

"Borlug is wounded," Nabil observed. "His bandits are exposed. His Citadel allies are in disarray. He will be quieter now. But he will not stop."

"Then we keep building," Lyra said, her voice firm. "Faster. We make the Compact so valuable, so interconnected, that trying to destroy it hurts everyone. We make the thread not just strong, but part of the continent's fabric."

Rask, the young Crimson Paw warrior who had gone with Ronan, spoke up, his voice hesitant. "The Timber-Fang sentries… they looked afraid. Not of us. Of something else. Of Borlug, maybe. Or of change." He looked at Kael. "The thread… maybe it's not just for those who already believe. Maybe it's a line thrown to those who are afraid, too."

The observation, from the most unexpected source, hung in the air. It was a deeper truth. Their fight wasn't just against enemies. It was against fear itself.

Kael looked at Lyra, at the weary determination in her eyes, at the invisible weight of the sleepers she kept, of the future she was trying to midwife into being. He looked at his pack, woven now with former enemies and strange allies.

"Then we throw more lines," he said. "And we make sure they hold."

Outside, the aurora was ghostly pale, reflected in the ice. Deep in the Mountain, a monitor beside a stasis pod flickered, a genetic decay marker ticking down by a fractional percentile. The past slept, its time running slow but finite. The present was a web of light and shadow, of threads held taut in the dark. And the future waited, silent and vast, for the weavers to see if their pattern would hold, or if it would all unravel in the cold, western wind.

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