Another month quietly slipped by.
Ren had finally received the long-awaited feedback from Selphira regarding his leadership progress, and it had been profoundly and genuinely unexpected.
She had cornered him during one of his subterranean fusion practices, and she hadn't delivered a single piece of heavy criticism. She also didn't offer a multi-step political doctrine.
She simply told him, with a strange, amused warmth in her ancient eyes, that he shouldn't change a single thing. She explicitly ordered him to continue being exactly who he was.
But what had truly thrown him completely off balance was her final, casual decree: he now possessed absolute, unquestionable clearance to drop the "Red Pathfinder" alias and use his real name on the Wall whenever he felt like it. He was granted free rein to manage his designated sector entirely as he saw fit.
