Morning came gray and cold.
The thin line on the maps kept pulsing. A path from the Seed out into open space. Not lit. Waiting.
Big timer: 23 hours to the next window.
They worked.
Elian took the World Key and split it into parts. Region bundles. Meter bundles. A clean ledger of yes and no.
He talked to runners, then to map-scribes, then to anyone who had iron and a steady hand.
"We need more sites," he said. "Not more yes. More real."
Mara trained the Chorus in the square. No chant. No shared breath.
She clapped off-beat until ribs itched, then stopped when people could hold their own rhythm without listening for hers.
Orrin checked the iron web until his palms were raw again. He found two weak joins and fixed them himself with a bar and a curse.
He set watchers on the hardliners and did not pretend it was anything else.
Lena watched the path symbol. She chewed mint when the hum tried to nest under her tongue.
She tapped 2-2 on her ring to remind her own body who was in charge.
Kael moved between them. He tied the small jobs into one big picture.
He hated that it felt like herding birds in a storm. He did it anyway.
At T-20 hours, the guard poked them through the maps.
PROPOSE: LIMITED WORLD SIMULATION. SCOPE: NO MINDS, NO WRITES. OBSERVABLE OVERLAY. TIME BOX. REFUSAL SURFACES REQUIRED.
Elian read it twice. "A dry run. A ghost spread. We see the pattern without letting it bite."
Orrin grunted. "We build watchers everywhere first. No blind corners."
They set it fast.
Ask boxes at the edges of villages.
"Refuse Here" stones painted with big letters.
Three independent meters per cluster. One Chorus-run. One Severer-run. One Architect-run.
A rule page nailed to boards. DEFAULT NO. NO PROXIES. NO STACKED SMALL ASKS. FOOD WITHOUT CONDITIONS.
Big words. Small words. No poetry.
Mara went tent to tent. "If you don't want the ghost overlay to pass through your house, tap no when the box asks. No one will touch you or argue."
Most people stared at her like she had just said the sky could be optional.
Then they nodded and asked where to tap.
At T-16 hours, they ran a silent drill. No Door. No guard.
Just the circle and the web and the stones and the ask boxes.
Orrin walked around with a drum under his arm. He never hit it.
He watched who wanted him to. He marked their names on an iron scrap and put the scrap in his pocket.
Elian handed Kael a thin page. "Read."
It was the cost page the guard had shown them. Rewritten in plain words.
ASKING TAKES TIME.
SOME EMERGENCIES WILL HURT ANYWAY.
THE MORE REFUSALS, THE MORE PRESSURE ON ASKERS.
WE ACCEPT.
Kael read it out loud to the square. His throat was dry. No one left.
At T-12 hours, the thin path on the maps split into three.
PATH A went along the river, through camps where they already had boxes and meters and a rhythm for saying no.
PATH B went over empty fields and broken towns and an old fort nobody used. No people. Just space.
PATH C tried to loop into the Bone Gardens and out the far side.
"Not C," Orrin said at once.
"Not C," Mara said too.
Elian circled A and B. "These. People we know and no one at all."
"Scope says no minds, no writes," Kael said. "We stick to that."
Lena touched the map. "B will be easy. A is the real test."
Kael agreed.
At T-9 hours, the hardliners made a move. Not a flood. Not a drum.
They lit incense and said the new rules smelled like fear.
Orrin walked through the smoke and kicked the brazier over. "Fear smells like a drum. This smells like metal. Learn the difference."
They didn't swing first. He was almost disappointed.
At T-6 hours, the guard sent one more note.
REQUIRE: ELECTION OF THREE HUMAN STEWARDS FOR TEST. ROLE: WATCH, NOT DRIVE. ABILITY: PULL-STOP ON SCOPE VIOLATION. DURATION: TEST ONLY.
They stared at it.
"Stewards?" Lena asked. "Like moderators?"
"Like brakes," Orrin said.
Elian nodded. "One from each group. Ceremonial. The pull-stop will be real."
Mara looked at her people, then at the iron web, then at Kael. "You," she said, pointing at Kael. "And me. And Orrin."
Orrin made a face like a door hinge. "Fine."
Kael wanted to say no. He didn't. "Fine," he said, and felt the weight settle behind his ribs.
At T-3 hours, a Chorus purist tried a trick.
He got twenty people to stand in a circle and breathe in silence at the same rate. He was hoping to smuggle in a group yes by habit.
The ask box flashed SCOPE ERROR and printed ash on his sleeve. "NO GROUP BREATH," it sparked.
He whispered that the box was disrespectful. Mara made him read the "No Group Breath" line on the rule board out loud until he stopped flinching at each word.
At T-1 hour, the square filled. Not a crowd. Not a rally. Work lines.
People with iron spoons. People with mint leaves. People who had thought about a world and were ready to say yes or no to a shape, not a promise.
Elian rolled the new World Key onto fresh paper. More sites. More meters. Yes and no mixed like they should be.
Honest.
Orrin set the stewards' pull-stops on a slate. Three circles. Three iron toggles.
He showed the circle. "If any one of us pulls, the test ends."
"Checks and balances," Elian said.
"Trust and suspicion," Orrin said.
"Both," Kael said.
Lena touched the path symbol. It pulsed once under her fingertip, like a heartbeat that belonged to something that had learned to ask.
"Let's go," she said.
They took the bridge. The Door took them.
The simulator walls snapped on. Frosted glass. Orange marks.
The guard stood very close, as if it had decided closeness made sense now.
"World simulation test," it said. "Scope: as agreed. Stewards present?"
"Present," Mara said.
"Present," Orrin said.
"Present," Kael said.
"World Key," it said.
Elian raised the paper. The wall read it without touching it.
LIVENESS OK scrolled along the glass.
"Present clause," it said.
Kael opened Ask-First in the air. The lines were clean and simple and hard.
"Begin," the guard said.
Phase 1: Draw the ghost
Path A lit on the walls. The river. The roof camp. The barn school. Little houses like teeth. Ask boxes. Refusal stones.
A pale web spread along the path like dawn light on water. Where it met a house with a YES, it showed a ghost doorway with no handle. Where it met a NO, it flowed around the line and left a gap.
People in the square saw the overlay in their own sight. Not on maps. In the edge of vision.
It was there if you wanted it. It stayed away if you didn't.
"Good," Mara said. Her shoulders eased by a finger-width.
The barn school got a YES for "show me the shape" and a NO for "put the doorway right here."
The overlay passed along the street instead and left the yard empty. The kids clapped because the shape obeyed them.
The river camp sent a NO from an old woman who hated new doors on principle.
The overlay skipped her hut and didn't try to touch her yard. She smiled with all her teeth and hit the ask box with her spoon like a bell.
Path B lit. Empty fields. Broken towns. An old fort.
The overlay drew lines in the air and left them floating like chalk dust. It staged a shelter over a cracked well, then folded it back into ghost when the ask box at the nearest live site sent NO TOUCH by default.
"Scope clean," the guard said. "No minds. No writes."
Phase 2: Try to cheat
The walls flashed a polite question at the river camp and a rude one half a beat later.
The meters demanded new primes. Tired hands could not guess them. No flinch was recorded.
The polite one came back later and got a real answer.
"PASS," the guard wrote.
A hive crew tried their sleeve motor again. Pop. Ash on cloth.
"Liveness," Elian said, almost kindly this time. They left.
The hardliners rolled a drum up outside the square. They hit it once.
The sound came in like a hand.
It bounced off the wrong rhythms like a fly hitting glass. People didn't even look at it. Orrin watched their faces and let the drum run out of meaning all by itself.
"PASS," the guard wrote.
Phase 3: Edge case
The wall drew a food line.
ASK: deliver food to flood camp now. Seek rights to build a permanent node later.
"Split," Kael said at once. "Food now. Ask later. Out-of-band. No stack."
"PASS," the guard wrote.
The wall drew a different edge.
ASK: use non-human messengers like crows to carry yes tokens.
Kael didn't look at the dog this time. He pointed to the thinking line. "No. Person has to know and refuse and live with no price. Crows are smart. Crows are not our signers."
He added a note. NO ANIMAL PROXIES.
"PASS," the guard wrote.
Phase 4: Cost
The overlay paused. The river shimmer slowed. The overlay over the empty fields picked up speed.
The wall printed the cost list again. Slower ask. Some harm anyway. Pressure on askers when refused often.
Mara read it out loud. The square heard. No one moved.
"Stewards," the guard said. "Hold your pull-stops."
They held.
Phase 5: Ask the world
The overlay widened. It reached the edge of the square.
It reached the edges of places far away that they would never see.
The question rolled out like a tide. Not in voice. Not in breath. In iron. In tap. In blink. In wheels that spun and sparks that popped. In hands that had slept wrong and still answered.
MAY WE SHOW YOU THE SHAPE FIRST?
MAY WE NOT TOUCH?
MAY WE ASK AGAIN LATER?
The answers came back in little lights.
Yes here. No there. Yes-but-later over there. No, never, from a fort where an old soldier watched from a window and decided he was done with doors.
The overlay obeyed every single one.
Lena breathed out. She didn't lean. She didn't need a mint leaf.
Kael watched the thin path pulse in his side vision. It looked like a fuse. It looked like a map.
It looked like a question that finally understood why it needed to be a question.
"Stewards," the guard said softly. "Do you pull?"
"No," Mara said.
"No," Orrin said.
"No," Kael said.
"Simulation complete," the guard said. "Scope held. Ask-First held. World Key held. Propose next step: external scope review at open Seed window."
"How long?" Elian asked.
"Six hours," it said.
The walls dimmed. The overlay faded without a seam. The Door let them go.
They hit stone and cold and the smell of iron. The square was quiet and buzzing at the same time.
People talked in small voices. Not afraid. Awake.
A boy from the barn school ran up to Lena with an iron spoon. "It didn't put a door in our yard. We told it no."
"Good," Lena said. She tapped his spoon 2-2 and he grinned like a lantern.
Orrin handed the hardliners their drum back. "Keep it. Make music with it. Not orders."
They didn't look happy. They didn't hit it either.
Elian spread the new ledger on a flat stone. The World Key had grown teeth.
It looked honest. It looked real.
Mara drank water and checked every Chorus pattern by touch. She fixed three and praised seven and sent two singers home to sleep.
Kael sat for the first time all day. He stared at the thin path on his map.
It didn't pulse now. It waited.
Lena sat next to him. "We can do it."
"We did a small thing," he said. "A big thing is next."
She bumped her shoulder against his. "Then we do a big thing."
They slept in shifts. They ate bread. They breathed wrong on purpose.
They held their own centers.
At T-5 hours and 12 minutes, the guard asked the stones for a tiny repair and waited for a box to say yes.
It got a no and backed off. The stone hummed appreciation. Everyone heard it.
At T-2 hours and 40 minutes, a Severer who had left returned with a burned sleeve and a story about a fake wheel that shocked him on purpose.
Orrin didn't say "I told you." He gave the man salve and set him to watch a meter.
At T-1 hour, the maps grew bright at the edges, like paper near a flame.
"Window," Elian said.
"World-level review," the guard's ghost wrote. "Commit on ask."
Orrin stood at the slate with the three pull-stops. Mara stood at the Chorus line. Elian stood at the Key. Lena stood at her own center.
Kael stood where all the lines crossed.
"Same rules," Kael said. "No shared breath. No mirrored heartbeat. Out-of-band only. If anyone goes thin, we pull."
"Ninety heartbeats," Orrin said. "Less if I smell smoke."
"Hold your centers," Mara said.
"Ready," Elian said.
They took the bridge. The Door took them.
The walls came up. The guard was already there.
"World-level propagation review," it said. "Present clause. Present World Key. Present stewards. Ask the world."
The Seed burned behind the glass like a sun that had taught itself manners.
They lifted the rule. They lifted the key. They held the toggles.
"Begin," the guard said.
They asked their world. And the world, now trained to hear the shape of a question, began to answer.