The decree arrived at dawn.
Etched on parchment woven with sigil thread and city-crest seals, it was delivered by crystal-drone to every relay point in Vehrmath. The language was meticulous:
> "All unlicensed magi-technological relay constructs not registered with the Council of Arcane Infrastructure shall be dismantled or sanctioned under Statute 9-A: Arcane Containment & Public Safety."
To the people, it meant one thing: the purple pulses were under attack—legally.
Within hours, city guards escorted by Arcten guild inspectors began removing relay nodes in broad daylight. Each removal was logged, each protest ignored.
Some citizens filmed the removals with shimmer-capture glyphs and posted them anonymously to public screens. In one, an inspector is caught sneering: "They can't spell regulation, but they want to run a network?"
The backlash was immediate. A quiet fire lit behind Vehrmath's eyes.
In a tea stall near Central Crossing, a pair of workers quietly rewired a backup pulse into the vendor cart's heating sigils. It hummed faintly. "This one doesn't need permits," the older of the two said. "It listens."
A tailor in the Lower Ducts installed a purple relay disguised as a sewing loom charm. She told customers, "It's not regulation—but it's reliable."
Inside the upper chambers of House Arcten, Vassian leaned against a polished lectern as a steward read off the day's enforcement tally.
"Thirty-two nodes neutralized. Seven pending tribunal hearings. Two nodes already reinstalled under Arcten branding."
Vassian barely smiled. "Let them argue. We'll own the regulations."
His tactic was simple: bury Benedict under bureaucracy. He didn't need fire. Just forms.
He rolled out 'public information seminars'—designed to discredit Benedict's tech. Flyers printed in gold and navy declared: "Unauthorized signals endanger lives." In smaller print: "Backed by Arcten Research Institute."
The noble elite nodded. The working class rolled their eyes. Underground taverns began hanging the flyers ironically—next to pulse-linked poetry recitals.
A city-wide radio caster ran a segment titled "Ghost Relays and Guild Wrongs," reading anonymous testimonials from citizens whose lives were saved or changed by the purple signals.
In the Pulse Hub, Benedict stared at the decree.
"They've weaponized the paperwork," he muttered.
Eline responded with a grin. "Then we file back."
By midday, she and Arden had submitted the entire purple relay framework as an open-source, educational system. On paper, it was now a teaching tool. Not a network.
And protected under the Citywide Enchantment Literacy Act.
Benedict began printing relay craft kits—flat-pack schematics labeled: "Learn to Build Your Own Signal!"
They gave them to schools. Libraries. Children.
Even a retired artificer in South Ember Quarter built three himself and installed them along a local canal, saying, "About damn time someone made this simple again."
A group of street performers began using node pulses to sync their juggling routines. One even rewrote a bardic chant to broadcast through the relay's feedback coil.
A young teacher in the Shadelow district began using relays as interactive quiz tools, beaming questions from rooftop to alley and rewarding correct responses with charm-stamped badges.
Inside the Court of Public Records, a minor tribunal convened to assess one purple node slated for dismantling.
Arden stood before the dais in a patchwork coat, eyes sharp. Beside him, Eline presented a scroll outlining their system's civic function.
Vassian's proxy, a silver-robed barrister named Halden Kriss, read the charges aloud: "Unlicensed arcane relay. Operating outside guild jurisdiction. Violating mana-harmonic zoning."
Eline cut in. "Protected under Code 7-C: Distributed Learning Initiatives."
A few members of the court—worn, weary clerks more familiar with bureaucratic maneuvering than real magic—glanced at each other.
One clerk muttered, "Didn't my daughter just build one of these?"
"We will review," the lead judge said finally. "And until then, the node stays."
Cheers echoed from the hallway.
Outside, students held up handmade placards: "We Learn. We Link. We Speak."
In the back of the room, a vendor who had lost his stall due to relay removal quietly wept. "They called it a hazard. But it brought my son home last week."
A group of elderly mages, long since retired, submitted an amicus scroll: "Let the signal remain. We've seen what silence costs."
From a rooftop, Nerys watched as children clustered around a pulse relay near a school courtyard.
One girl tapped the rune interface. "Found a scarf on 7th stairwell. Purple signal if it's yours!"
Another sent a short pulse-message to her grandfather across the district. "Dinner tonight?"
Nerys lowered her gaze. She had the codes to dismantle every node in the zone. But her fingers didn't move.
That night, she found a note tucked in her satchel—unsigned, traced in micro-rune ink.
"Control collapses where community thrives."
She stared at it longer than she expected.
Later, she returned to the rooftop and watched in silence as a candlelight vigil flickered around a node marked for removal. No protests. Just light.
A girl who had once shouted at Nerys during a takedown quietly left a paper crane at the base of the relay. Folded into the wings was a message:
"This helped my brother find his way home. Please don't take it away."
Graffiti bloomed like vines across Vehrmath.
"Let the city speak."
"No tower hears like the crowd does."
"Pulse and be heard."
Teachers used relays to guide spell-syntax exercises. Couriers organized lost-and-found chains. Some artists disguised signal boosters as sculptures—statues holding pulse beacons like lanterns.
The phrase "signal suppression" turned from ordinance language into protest slang. Someone painted it in luminous paint across a city wall, crossed out the word 'suppression,' and replaced it with 'resurrection.'
Pulse nodes began to hum with community-generated songs—each one encoded in light and rhythm. Shael designed a sign-language overlay that pulsed meaning visually for those without sound.
A baker installed a node in her shop with the sign: "Ask for bread, ask for help. This signal is free."
A group of retired scribes rewired a forgotten relay to pulse their memoirs, chapter by chapter, into the local marketplace.
One young woman, a healer's apprentice, began recording street remedies via the signal and syncing them to pulse recipes. She called it: "The Kitchen Clinic."
At dusk, the public square outside the Court of Records lit with soft purple glow.
A child gave a demonstration on how to link relays using only chalk and voice rhythm.
Benedict stood at the edge, arms folded.
"Too visible," Arden said behind him. "You're going to make Vassian choke on his ego."
"Good," Benedict said.
High above, Vassian watched from a tower balcony, fists clenched.
At that same moment, Calder Vance received a petition signed by over ten thousand citizens requesting that the purple relay project be protected under the city's Historical Arcane Innovation Preservation Act.
He tapped a rune into his scriptorium crystal.
APPROVED.
The network didn't just survive.
It graduated.