And in that remembering, something subtle endured.
Not policy.
Not structure.
Not even intention.
But tension.
The living kind.
The tension between power and restraint.
Between capacity and consequence.
Between what could be done
and what should be done.
Asher felt it the way others felt weather. A pressure shift in unseen atmospheres. A slight thinning where complexity had once been honored. A dangerous smoothness where friction should have remained.
He did not intervene.
Intervention was a crude instrument.
Correction was louder than necessary.
Salvation—when rushed—often erased the very lessons that made survival meaningful.
So he watched.
When one system chose efficiency over understanding, he allowed its metrics to bloom—briefly—so that its blind spots could widen just enough to be seen.
