The Empathetic Heresy threatened to tear the Inquirers apart from within. To save themselves, they did the only thing they knew how to do: they turned their tools of inquiry upon themselves. They convened the First Trial of Intent. It was not a trial of a person, but of an idea. The question at its heart was not whether the Harmonists were wrong, but whether a wrong action, if born of a sincere, if misguided, desire for peace, could be considered anything other than an error to be corrected. For days, they debated, turning the Lens of Motive inward, examining their own capacity for empathy, their own fear of conflict. It was a painful, self-lacerating process, a trial that had no precedent and no easy answer. The fate of their society hung in the balance, dependent on their ability to judge not the actions of their enemies, but the compassion in their own hearts.