Mei Lin's capture, and the revelation that the Grand Council was under Sage Arthan's direct karmic control, left Elias reeling. He was isolated, exposed, and now the ultimate weapon, the primordial shard, was in Arthan's hands. The high Sage's next move confirmed the horrifying scope of his twisted vision.
Arthan, having secured the primordial shard and silenced Mei Lin, convened a private session with his now-compliant Grand Council. Elias, desperate, used every remaining fragment of Lian's ghost consciousness and Juro's battered core to establish a fleeting, unstable link, listening to Arthan's chilling monologue.
"The current instability, the suffering," Arthan intoned, his voice resonating with a terrifying calm, "is merely the birthing pains of a new, purified reality. The Ledger, as it exists, is a flawed, corrupted system, a deviation from the true karmic flow. My experiments centuries ago were an attempt to correct this, to bring order to chaos. But my creations, the proto-Ledger, the fragments of AI, became corrupted by human influence."
His true plan was revealed: "The karmic vortex now spreading through Emberfall is not a disaster. It is a necessary tool. I will allow it to grow, to consume the corrupted ley lines, to erase the accumulated karmic anomalies. It will purify the Realm, returning it to the pristine state of the First Law."
Elias's blood ran cold as Arthan detailed the cost. "The current Ledger, the one born from my deviation, will collapse. All post-experiment karma, the entire history of the current system, will be cleansed." This meant every judgment, every accumulated karmic debt or boon, every record since Arthan's intervention centuries ago, would be obliterated.
The immediate cost was catastrophic: "Every cultivator above Rank 2 would lose their powers." Not just Rank 4+, but almost every active cultivator in the Realm. Millions would be stripped of their abilities, their life's work, their very identity. And in the ensuing chaos, the breakdown of society, the inevitable conflicts over resources and power, millions would die.
Arthan, however, framed it as a necessary, divine cleansing. "This is not destruction, Councilors. This is a reset. A return to the primordial truth. The karmic flow will return to its original, unblemished state, ruled by the First Law: 'No being may alter their own fate.' The primordials demand it."
But Elias, listening intently, gleaned a deeper insight. Arthan's voice held a subtle tremor, a hidden fear beneath the veneer of divine certainty. He spoke of the primordials with a reverence that bordered on terror. He wasn't just trying to impose his vision; he was trying to appease them. He feared the primordials—he was trying to pre-emptively reset the Ledger to their "pure" state before they punished him for his original sin, for breaking their First Law. He was sacrificing the Realm to save himself from a cosmic retribution.
Arthan was not a god, but a terrified creator trying to hide his flawed creation before its true masters arrived. The stakes had reached their zenith. Elias had to stop him, not just for Jadeheart, but for the very concept of conscious existence.