This mine did not used to need me.

That is the thought that comes first, but I do not allow myself to sit with it for long. Mines require oversight, they always have. That is why I was sent to the Reach. That is why the post exists at all. Still, there was a time when this place resolved its own issues without waiting for someone like me to intervene from above.

The delay is what gives it away.

Before, issues like these would have come to someone like me first. They would have been elected to hear them, empowered to resolve what they could, trusted to act in the open. A disputed shift rotation, a compensation claim. A safety concern raised before it became an injury. Most things ended there, settled by someone the workers themselves had chosen.

Of course, escalation was always an option.

The question could be raised, carried outward, and answered quickly, not because agreement was guaranteed, but because the network made avoidance impossible. The rune lattice carried disagreement as readily as consensus. Arguments, persuasion, conviction — all of it moved at the speed of thought. Everyone heard the issue at hand. Those who cared answered. Those who did not still lived with the result.

Speed was not a principle they praised. It was simply how things worked.

Now those same issues sit in front of me, inert, wrapped in procedure. Reports stacked where there used to be outcomes.

This is governance, I remind myself. This is order.

By the Forge does order take time, though.

The old system did not reject oversight. It bound it. The network took the weight of the greatest issues and distributed it outward. Once enough voices had been heard, there was no higher office to appeal to, no authority left to reinterpret the result. Responsibility did not climb, it settled.

That kind of structure leaves little room for insulation.

I am, by trade, insulation.

Were this still the Republic, the role would have been clear and limited. Useful, necessary, but never central. I would handle issues early, while they were still small enough to fix. I could escalate when escalation was needed, and step aside when the vote came. The thought unsettles me, not because it diminishes my importance, but because it describes a system that functioned without relying on people like me to endure delay on its behalf.

Zakhar did not require dwarves like me to function.

The rune network is silent now. Varosk is gone. The city that anchored the lattice, the heart that fed it, the knowledge that shaped it — all of it was erased in the Cataclysm, turned into a crater so complete there is nothing left to reconstruct. Even if the Empress wished to restore it, there is no foundation to build upon.

There will be no second iteration. No moderated revival. No imperial version folded into an acceptable process. What replaces it will be slower, layered by design, answerable upward rather than outward.

This is acceptable. This is necessary, I have been told. That is what the War of the Gate is said to have proven, at least according to the official telling.

The reasoning is sound, but…it is also incomplete.

Because what the network prevented was not error, but accumulation. Issues were addressed while they were still small enough to burn cleanly. Resentment had little time to settle. Suffering could not be stored, managed later, or redirected. It had to be faced by those who chose to speak and endured openly by those who did not.

There were no proclamations. No authorship. No one to thank.

I cannot approve of this. Yet I understand why it worked, why they trusted it. Why they accepted outcomes they disliked. Why compliance followed without coercion.

The issue had been visible. The debate had been shared. Once the decision was made, there was nothing left to reinterpret.

Now they wait.

They wait for review.

They wait for scheduling.

They wait for me.

I am here to replace memory with management, to ensure that this mine conforms to imperial tolerances. That work is already underway. Delays will lengthen. Responsibility will climb. Suffering will become measurable, negotiable, and therefore useful.

The Empire prefers systems that require people like me.

Still, when I think of the silence where the network once answered, I cannot stop the thought from forming.

It was well made.

And because it was well made, it had to be broken.