Lazy Salvation Sinners

The Lust Sin Lord’s voice opened the floodgates to a can of worms.

The lords who held administrative positions started firing reports one after the other.

People were rioting in nearly every city of consequence, the kind of riots that forced garrison commanders to choose between crowd control and periter duty, and that shut down grain distribution regardless of which they chose.

Food prices had spiked across the four inner-domain markets in three weeks, not because supply lines had been cut, but because enough panic-buying and enough rchants raising prices to match the panic produced the sa effect as a siege.

Administrative functions had slowed to a crawl in four cities and stopped entirely in two. Courts were not convening. Tax collection had been suspended. Local magistrates were sending letters up the chain asking for guidance and receiving nothing in return, because the people they were writing to were equally without answers.

In two thousand years of recorded history, through invasions and plagues and the fall of an entire domain, the inner territories had never revolted.

They had finally arrived at this historical mont.

The official finished his report and stepped back.

The silence that followed lasted several seconds, which was unusual for a room full of people who made careers out of filling silences.

"And the source of this unrest?" The Envy Sin Lord's voice erged from the shadows of his seat, carrying a precise, clipped quality.

The official's eyes drifted toward the Wrath domain's section.

Every eye in the room did the sa.

Cornelia sat with the sa straight posture she always maintained, her expression positioned sowhere between bored and scary.

One of her domain's lords, a heavyset commander nad Aldric who oversaw the section right to the Ashbastion, cleared his throat. "The migration from the border regions carried news ahead of it. The refugees' accounts spread faster than we could manage."

"Then you failed to manage them," Envy said.

"We failed to make the truth sound less true," Aldric replied flatly, and then adjusted his phrasing. "The situation at the border is not sothing we could credibly soften. Anyone who had seen it firsthand had no reason to spare the telling."

"And what precisely is the situation at the border?" Gluttony's voice was lower, almost lazy.

A younger commander from the northern stretch of the Wrath Domain answered, a man with sun-darkened skin and the sort of eyes that had stopped sleeping easily so ti ago.

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"Since the last invasion, after a year of silence," he said, "they have not stopped."

He let that sit.

"Every previous wave followed a pattern. They would strike in force, be repelled, and pull back while they rebuilt density. That cycle has held for as long as any of us can rember."

He set his hands on the table before him. "Since the last wave, the cycle has broken. They are not pulling back. They are pressing continuously, in smaller concentrated columns across the full length of the border simultaneously. When we concentrate strength to repel one column, two others find the gap. Villages that were safe before have been razed. Towns that had walls are gone. The people who escaped ca out with only what they were wearing."

Other lords added to the account before he had finished, almost as if they were pouring their long accumulated grievances to the audience.

Supply lines running thin… Soldiers rotating without relief... Healing Corps overwheld… The Ashbastion beyond capacity but still absorbing more than its infrastructure could manage...

“In the end… we were left with two options: push the refugees further into the inner domains and feed the panic, or leave them outside and leave them to the Narkals,” Aldric spoke solemnly, but everyone could see the pain behind his eyes.

…As well as the resolve to never go through with the second option.

By the ti the Wrath Domain's report was complete, the silence carried a different flavor than the one before it. Several faces across the grand chamber had gone still.

It wasn’t hard to guess the thoughts running through their heads.

The Pride Domain had fallen within living mory for most of the people in the upper seats so the images being painted now were not abstract: walls that had held for centuries collapsing over the course of a single brutal season, the Lord of Pride himself, humanity's shield, the strongest among them at the ti, broken at last under the weight of a billion bodies pressing forward without ceasing.

If the Wrath Domain fell now… the frontier will move.

As where? Isn’t that obvious…

To Gluttony. To Envy. To Greed. Domains that had never been asked to hold a line, whose infrastructure had never been built with siege in mind.

Ashen watched the calculation happen behind a dozen sets of eyes and kept his own expression carefully uninvolved.

Sadly for him, soone decided to involve him.

"Co to think of it." Gluttony's voice was lighter than the occasion warranted, which ant it was deliberate. "Didn't we station that war hero at the tip of Wrath's territory? The one who perford so admirably during the last invasion?"

Several heads turned.

Ashen kept his face pleasant.

"He seems unusually quiet for a man with such a reputation."

"A hero is one man." Cornelia's voice closed around the comnt like a hand closing around a blade. "One man can do extraordinary things. He cannot be a wall."

No one pressed further.

She let the quiet hold for one beat, then shifted register to a softer one.

"But I did not co here to discuss what cannot be helped. I ca with a proposal." She looked across the chamber. "A proposal to end this dilemma with the Narkals. Once and for all."

The Lust Sin Lord's haze shifted almost imperceptibly. "Oh? Truly?" Genuine interest moved beneath the warmth of her voice. "Then enlighten us, Cornelia."

Cornelia glanced to the side.

"Lucia Evernight. Step forward."

When that na was spoken, the attention of the participants turned once more, this ti to the pink-haired woman.