Morning came dressed as paperwork. Kael woke with the ledger heavy on his knees and the hymn envelopes from yesterday still fresh in his head like new scars that had decided to be useful. Mira blinked awake and found the knife already in her hand. Nox counted his shoulders until they lined up. Renn slept with his headlamp in his fist like a child holds a toy and did not apologize when he noticed.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox: "And sturdy."
Renn: "And on the dots."
[System: Day Plan] - Mission A: train Isa and Tom on pins, dots, squares, and interlock sequence under Thread supervision. - Mission B: unlock Materials Fatigue and reinforce A1 and A2 with better load paths; audit hinge screws. - Mission C: run first mini - convoy: escort Aunt Mara and child from down - two to A2 using hymn map. - Observation: Blue has started painting fake squares at wrong places near A2. - Reward: +1 PC for successful training; +2 PC if convoy completes without breach; +1 PC for reinforcement quality.
PC available: 32.0.
Tier - 1: Engineering T1 - > Materials Fatigue (cost: 3 PC).
Kael bought the node with the relief of a carpenter handed a better pencil.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
Engineering T1: Materials Fatigue installed.
Effects: +bracing strategy, +fastener audit, +failure prediction on wood/metal.
PC remaining: 29.0.
Mira eyed him. "You look like you can hear nails complain."
"I can," Kael said. "We will help them complain less." - - - Training day: pins and dots
Isa and Tom arrived at the time agreed, cloth tag flipped to WATCH, then to HERE. Isa had tied her hair tighter today as if to keep loose thoughts from interfering with useful ones. Tom moved with the hesitation of a man translating fear into obedience.
Thread took the lead. Mira stood in the corridor with chalk, rope, and the pendulum at her back like a chapel organ. She spoke low and clear.
"Dots are go. Squares are wait. If there is no dot and no square, you are wrong. If blue draws a dot, you ignore it. Only chalk that looks like dust belongs to us."
She made them step dot to dot without looking down, eyes on her hand, then square and freeze while she walked a circle around them and tapped their ankles until their feet learned the posture. She taught the sequence with the pins like a dance: long in, rope arm, short in, shelf set. Reverse to sleep. They repeated until fingers moved without the eyes. Tom fumbled twice, then held his breath and stopped fumbling.
"Bar," she said, and Nox stepped in to teach the lift - and - set of the bar with his pipe like a metronome for weight. He pushed their shoulders into the correct angle and pushed their egos into the floor until they remembered that doors are heavier than pride.
"Latch," Kael said, and traced each hinge with a pencil and a finger, showing where the load wants to go, where the wood is tired, where the screw needs a sister. He handed Isa a screwdriver and made her replace a stripped screw with a longer one that found honest wood. She smiled despite herself when the plate stopped wiggling.
"Scout," Renn said quietly, and took Tom along the safe - walk, whispering dots under his breath like prayers he had invented. He showed him the no - step plane with a broom handle, tapped the trip line gently, and then reset it with hands that had learned mercy and discipline were not enemies.
[System: Training]
Isa and Tom: pins sequence learned; safe - walk grammar learned; shelf and pendulum resets passed under supervision.
+1 PC.
Isa stood straighter afterward. "We have learned to be correct," she said, daring the sentence out loud. Kael approved of the audacity. - - - Blue's counterfeit squares
Near A2, three new squares had appeared overnight, painted in blue, placed half a step off the real path and just beyond the quiet node. They were precise enough to be persuasive and wrong enough to be fatal.
Mira scowled. "It is copying because it watched."
Kael measured the offset: 28 centimeters, a consistent lie. "We teach offset immunity," he said. He placed faint chalk Xs in the wrong squares, low, almost not there. "If you see an X that looks ashamed of itself, step nowhere near it."
He added a new rule to Path Grammar: no square stands alone; every real square is paired with a dot two steps behind. He marked the pairings and made Isa and Tom repeat them until sweat made the chalk run and knowledge stayed.
[System: Counter - grammar]
Rule: paired squares; X on counterfeits; offset discipline.
Effect: - misstep risk under blue mimicry. - - - Reinforcing the doors
A1 had learned to lie less, but it still creaked in the hinge like an old man complaining about weather. With Materials Fatigue, Kael could hear which screw was telling secrets. He backed out three that had chewed their holes into ovals and replaced them with longer cousins biting new wood. He added a steel plate scavenged from a shelf bracket to spread the load from the latch, countersinking the screws so fingers would not learn the shapes and cut themselves. He shifted the strap anchor down two fingers to ride a stud instead of drywall dreams.
At A2, the bar seat had begun to polish the wood where it kissed. He added a thin steel saddle to prevent crush and glued a leather pad under the strap cleat to reduce creep. He scribed dates into the metal with a nail because doors deserve birthdays and checkups.
Nox ran a hand over the work and nodded. "Feels like a door that knows its job."
"It will complain later," Kael said. "We will schedule its complaint."
[System: Reinforcement]
A1 and A2 load paths improved; fasteners audited; wear points plated.
+1 PC. - - - Convoy math
Isa's down - two had an Aunt Mara whose legs had opinions and a child who had too many questions and not enough quiet. Kael mapped the route using the hymn envelope: leave at minute 4 of the 19:00 shoulder, reach the stair elbow at minute 6, pause at the quiet square until the amplitude thinned, then pass to A2 at minute 9. He wrote GO, SQUARE, GO, DOOR like musical notation with feet.
"Bar carries if legs complain," he said. "Scout runs ahead by one dot only. Thread commands. Latch judges. If blue speaks, we do not answer."
Isa looked like she wanted to argue with hierarchy and then liked it. "We accept your nouns," she said. Tom swallowed and nodded too hard.
[System: Convoy Plan]
Timing tied to hymn map v0.2. Roles assigned. - - - A stairwell that wanted drama
At nineteen minus two, the building inhaled. The hymn ear wrote its first shy lights. Kael nodded to Mira and they moved. Isa and Tom brought Aunt Mara between them, the child wide - eyed and taking the world as notes he could not yet read. Nox carried a bag that weighed less than a person and more than a want. Renn went dot to dot a breath ahead, eyes on corners and edges, not on monsters in his head this time.
At the second landing the hymn deepened. The quiet square waited. Mira held up a hand: wait. They waited. The child looked like he wanted to step out of the square just to test gravity. Isa pinched his sleeve without looking at him, which is a kind of love.
Footsteps below. Not infected. Not careful enough to be them. Two men, laughing wrong. The laugh of people who had found the idea of a joke but not the content. They reached the stair throat as the hymn hit its shoulder and the LEDs on the ear stick wrote a bright bar that looked like a warning.
"Square," Mira said, soft but iron. They pushed Aunt Mara into the exact geometry and flattened themselves into angles that had been invented for this. The men below stopped at the elbow and began to hum a snatch of song to make fun of silence. The hymn amplified in their chests like a choir prank. The listener variant drifted into the stairwell behind them as if summoned by a wrong chord.
The men saw her too late. They made their own noise and it tasted like fear. The listener tilted her head, smiled, and walked past them upward as if they were a painting, not people. The men forgot how to laugh. They left.
"Go," Kael said at minute 6 by his count. They moved. At minute 9 they were at A2 and the bar took its responsibility like a friend who had waited for a favor. Inside, Aunt Mara sat and cried without water. The child asked where the bathroom was. Nox pointed as if this were a normal house, which is to say he lied usefully.
[System: Convoy]
Aunt Mara and child moved to A2 without breach using hymn timing.
+2 PC.
Isa squeezed Kael's forearm hard enough to leave a record. "Thank you," she said. The words had edges and dignity.
"We run ledgers," Kael said, as if that excused the kindness. - - - Blue answers with a picture
Back at A1, under WE COUNT YOU and the crown contained by their thin rectangle, a new drawing had appeared: three small stick figures behind a large one, as before, but now the large one held a rectangle over the small ones like a roof. Underneath, in jerky letters: WE SEE YOUR HOUSE.
Mira's jaw tightened. "Do not look at our house."
"We make them look at math instead," Kael said. He drew the picture in the ledger because ignoring data is how people fall in love with their anger. He added a small square on the page and colored it in. It meant: we saw this and did not act out of feeling.
Nox spat carefully away from all lines. "If walls could get punched," he said.
"They can," Kael said. "But not this wall. Not yet."
[System: Observation]
Blue: surveillance claim language. Action: no contact; increase veil on A1 light; keep children silent on approach.
He taped a scrap of cloth over the peephole from the hall side, disguising it as a tear already there, and shifted the interior light baffle so that the stripe no longer kissed the door seam at any angle. He wrote VEIL++ in the margin to make himself remember verbs. - - - A child asks a correct question
The child sat on the floor near the power box, fascinated by the switch. He looked up at Kael and asked, "Are you the king of this house?"
Mira almost choked. Nox grinned. Renn looked at the ceiling to avoid complicity.
Kael considered the injury of the word king and wrapped it in gauze.
"No," he said. "I am the latch. The latch decides when a door is open. The thread sees lines. The bar holds weight. The scout counts corners. If we ever have a king, we will make him hold the door while we sleep."
The child nodded solemnly. "Okay," he said. "I can be a dot."
"You will be a dot when you learn to be still inside squares," Mira said dryly, and the child decided that was fair. - - - Quiet Court: we add people to nouns
They convened under stripe - light. Kael read the day with fewer metaphors than usual because carrying people steals adjectives. - Training: Isa and Tom learned pins, dots, squares; interlock passed under Thread. - Reinforcements: A1 and A2 improved; fasteners replaced; straps moved to studs; plates added. - Blue: counterfeit squares placed; counter - grammar deployed; surveillance picture on A1. - Convoy: Aunt Mara and child moved to A2 using hymn timing; no breach; listener variant observed passing. - Veil procedures improved for A1. - Doctrine: repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+1 PC (training), +1 PC (reinforcement), +2 PC (convoy), +1 PC (discipline), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 34.0.
Advisory: With growing numbers, draft House Rules v0.1: silence windows, food ritual, waste path, child protocol (dot game), proof - of - life for minors (picture - counters).
Kael wrote HOUSE RULES at the top of a clean page, then stopped and looked at Mira. "Thread writes the rule for children," he said. "Because Thread knows when movement is a sin."
Mira nodded, eyes softer and more tired than before. "Rule one," she said. "Dots are a game. Squares are a bigger game. The prize is that you are still here."
Nox stretched and pretended he was not listening too hard. Renn fell asleep in his chair with the headlamp still in his fist.
Kael put his palm on the ledger and gave the sentence that had saved them more times than a weapon could.
"We do not need to be brave."
"We need to be correct," they answered, and the child whispered, "And on the dots," because he had learned a language faster than any adult.
Outside, the blue painted wrong squares where it wanted ankles to stand. Inside, they drew right squares where hearts would learn to wait. The hymn map sat like a calm weather report for a city that had forgotten how to deserve one. The doors kept their obligations. The screws stopped complaining for one night. The house did not require a king. It required a latch.