GREATER GOOD AETHERIAL MEDIATOR

Every citizen of the Greater Good knows the word. Far fewer understand what stands behind it. The Aether is not a power source, not a weapon, not a tool to be picked up and aimed. It is the awareness of the universe itself - vast, patient, indifferent, and present in everything the Empire reaches toward. It does not belong to the Greater Good. The Greater Good has merely learned to ask. And asking is harder than any battle. The Aether is not sentient in the way a person is sentient, but it listens, and it has preferences, and it remembers. To draw on it you must speak to it - negotiate, flatter, bargain, soothe, and on the worst days, threaten. There is no academy that graduates these minds in ranks. Across a billion souls, perhaps one is born who can hold that conversation and return from it intact. The Greater Good calls her a Mediator, and treats her with the careful reverence reserved for things it cannot replace. But the universe is not the only thing that needs mediating. The Gre