To foster doubt, Kaelen needed proof of fallibility. Theron's reign was seen as divinely prosperous. Kaelen would challenge that. He turned his attention to the Grand Orrery, a magnificent public work commissioned by Theron to celebrate his victory.
It was a symbol of his enlightened rule, a complex clockwork model of the heavens. Kaelen's Scouts infiltrated the construction site. He studied the blueprints, not with an engineer's eye, but with a Tile Wizard's understanding of stress and resonance.
He identified a single, crucial keystone in the central gear assembly. A flaw here would not cause immediate collapse, but a slow, grinding failure.
Using a Scout with delicate, bone-needle fingers, he spent a week making microscopic fractures in the keystone's housing, a flaw so fine no mortal inspector would ever find it.
He calculated the stress cycles. The Orrery would function perfectly for its grand unveiling, and then, over the following months, it would begin to stutter, to groan, to lose time. A slow, public, and inexplicable failure. A crack in the facade of Theron's perfect reign.