Chapter 77 - Chapter 77: The Hostile Takeover

The Western Capital's Grand Exchange did not look like a battlefield, but it had consumed more lives than all the border skirmishes of the last century combined. It was a massive, octagonal cathedral of glass and wrought iron, towering over the imperial core like a monument to perpetual margin. Inside, the noise was an absolute, physical weight—the synchronized clicking of ten thousand mechanical ticker slates, the frantic shouting of floor runners clad in color-coded guild vests, and the heavy, metallic smell of copper grease and hot hydraulic oil from the central ledger engines.