System
the Hearth
The dead, starless system where the Nhál debt was paid.
Type
star system (dead / starless)
Position
Canon has not established a position
Description
A dead, starless sky. Its one recorded property is temporal: the Hearth timestamp anomaly — a discrepancy between the Cairn's trusted authenticated clock and wound-adjacent observation here — filed by Vale as an instrument fault. This is the earliest rung of the §6.5 temporal-vision ladder (the-cairn.md).
Classification
A dead / starless star system (following the sys-12 "star system" descriptive convention). Reached via a Nhál passage (–15); not part of the Sable Reach.
Wound state
The only recorded observable is the timestamp anomaly against the Cairn's clock. No wound-interior mechanism is named here or anywhere on the page.
Canon has not fixed this place in space, so the archive does not invent a coordinate for it. It appears in the gazetteer as unplaced rather than on the star map as a guess.
On the record
- ~2313–14 (–15) Vael makes the Hearth traversal via a Nhál passage and pays the Nhál debt (owed after his capability-exposure). The peoples' ledger is thereby balanced-not-closed. Vale files the timestamp anomaly as an instrument fault — "the §6.5 rung she doesn't know she's on."
- ~2316+ (S13, planned) The temporal-vision ladder plays out (instrumentation before human experience); this file records only the earliest seeded rung.