The second arc's first institutional test arrived not as crisis but as paperwork.
A B-Rank guild called the Iron Meridian submitted a formal challenge to the Council partnership agreement three days after the NS-1 classification was confirmed, arguing that the bond network's stabilization activities constituted unlicensed interference in registered guild operational territories.
The document was twelve pages of carefully structured institutional language — the specific kind of careful that indicated the people who wrote it understood they didn't have a strong case and had compensated by making the weak one extremely difficult to dismiss quickly.
Elara read it twice before setting it down.
