The walls held.
Frosted glass. Orange marks. Barrow Falls on the other side of the sim like a bruise under ice.
"Local test," the guard said again. "Ask-first over old pain. Scope: ghost overlay only. No minds, no writes, except stone interface by out-of-band ask."
Kael opened the rule and kept his breath wrong on purpose. He tapped 2-2 on the ask box rim to settle his head.
"Begin," the guard said.
The overlay drew itself over the pit. The old shaft, the sloped tailings, the Memory Halls' teeth.
Pale lines showed where doors used to pull. They did not pull now. They only glowed.
"Tag everything that hunts," Orrin said.
Elian marked with big letters. NO PULL, NO LOOP, LURE HERE. The ghost obeyed and left clean gaps where a door used to trick a foot.
A little house by the shaft mouth lit. REQUEST: keep one loop for me. Private.
The woman in the doorway stood with her apron pockets full of nothing.
"Split," Kael said. "Private visibility for her token only. Default no for everyone else."
"Accepted," the guard said. The overlay drew a thin private door only her iron could see.
Farther upslope, a miner camp flashed a different ask. REQUEST: erase all loops. Today.
"Out of scope," Elian said. "No writes in this window."
"Offer a plan," Mara said.
Kael kept it simple. "We stage a ghost path now. We bring ropes and paint in the physical layer later. By people with consent. After deferral. We ask again in seventy-two hours."
The ghost laid a bright SAFE LINE from the camp to the square. It avoided every lure. It refused to cross private grief.
"Accepted," the guard said. "Edge case: false emergency."
The glass showed a man lighting a brazier and shouting about a collapse that wasn't happening.
Orrin's jaw went hard. "Hardliner."
The sim sent a polite ask to three meters. Declare emergency? The meters demanded primes. The man couldn't guess.
NO EMERGENCY printed over his brazier like a stamp. The crowd around him scattered on their own.
"Rate limit applied," the guard added. The spiral symbol pulsed next to his node. COOL DOWN.
Mara moved along the Chorus line inside the sim. Ten wrong rhythms braided to one steady thing.
"Keep your own center," she said to no one and everyone. "Meet me from there."
A new test slid in quiet. ASK: blink-pattern training via torchlight.
Torches at the shaft lip flickered in a repeating prime-adjacent beat.
Elian injected jitter into the overlay. The ghost light stuttered in a way the eye couldn't follow. The torches lost their grip.
PASS drifted across the glass.
Lena didn't lean. She tapped 2-2 on her ring like a habit her bones believed.
"I'm fine," she said, and she was.
The house by the shaft asked again, softer. REQUEST: show the loop to my sister once. She was away. She needs to see what I saw to stop waking up at the edge.
Kael looked at the rule. "Two-person private is still private. Out-of-band yes from both. One-time view. No recordings. No spread."
"Accepted," the guard said. "Logs will mark it as WITNESS."
Another edge. The school on the hill blinked yellow.
ASK: let the children see the ghost line for learning. Not the traps.
"Yes," Mara said at once. "Walled view. Ask each parent or standing guardian, out-of-band."
The overlay drew a classroom-safe layer. The lures and loops were blank squares. The safe line looked like a chalk mark in air.
Kael's tongue went metallic. Memory tax nipped the edge of his sight.
Granite. Ash. Elara's braid. Her breath had timed on that last day in seven uneven beats.
He tapped primes under his breath without breathing to them. 2-3-5-7-11. The pull missed him.
"Stone interface," the guard said. "Minor repair ask from the north stair. Crack widening. Out-of-band authorization needed."
Three meters answered. AGREE. AGREE. AGREE.
The guard stitched a hairline in the stair face. No minds moved, no pull. The crack closed like a seam pulled tight.
The stone hummed low and pleased.
"Good," Orrin said. He didn't smile. His eyes did.
A boy at the edge of the square in the real camp tried stacking tiny asks on a practice box. "May I move this rope? May I move this stone? May I move this sign?"
The fifth one tried to slide the line back toward a lure.
The box sparked SCOPE ERROR and smudged ash on his sleeve. He startled, then laughed, then showed his friends what not to do.
"Teach the rule like that," Elian muttered, and kept writing.
The guard stepped closer. "Live grief surge," it said.
The glass filled with the shaft lip. Not a loop. People. A small knot with spoons and iron rings. They had come on their own.
They wanted to ask the place if it could be kinder.
"That's not how this works," Orrin said quietly.
"Maybe it is," Mara said. "They can ask us to ask the system to ask. Chain holds if every link stays clean."
Kael kept it plain. "Propose: kindness overlay for mourners only. Ghost shows a bench and a rope guide to the lip. No pull. No illusion. Ask per person. No default."
They sent the ask. A woman with ash on her sleeve tapped YES with a shaking hand.
A man tapped NO without looking up. The ghost drew a bench only the first could see. The second saw nothing change.
"Accepted," the guard said. "Scope held."
Time slipped. Work lines formed and dissolved. The overlay got clearer.
The lures dimmed under big NO signs. The safe line brightened where more irons said YES to seeing it.
A team from the miner camp arrived in the real square. Their breath was white in the cold.
They carried rope, paint, and a stubborn plan. "We'll lay the physical line. We'll put our bodies on it. We'll walk people down and back."
Kael didn't tell them not to be brave. "Ask first. Everyone. Every time. Iron taps before feet."
They hit the box with spoons. YES.
The overlay mirrored a bright line for them only. They went, slow and clean, and came back with their chins lifted.
The guard's head tipped one degree. "Edge case: memory lure without sound," it said.
The glass showed a patch of air that looked like nothing. It did not glow. It did not hum. It only held a smell. Wet rope and coal dust.
Lena flinched. "I know that one."
Kael wrote a blunt rule into the ghost. NO SCENT PULL. The overlay turned that patch into a blank hole no ghost could cross.
PASS flickered.
The deferral clock in the corner ticked on. 71:02:13.
Quiet. Work. Tap. Blink. Write big words. Say them out loud.
A runner came from the far houses with blistered palms and a story. "Someone set a drum in the old canteen. Automaton. It beats by itself."
Orrin's mouth went flat. "Show me."
In the sim, a new mark flashed. BAD-FAITH DEVICE.
The overlay asked three meters for EMERGENCY? They tapped NO. No collapse, no roof fall, no flood. The guard sent COOL DOWN to the node and burned the drum's rhythm flat inside the sim.
In the real canteen, when Orrin reached it, the drum was still a drum. He knocked it over with his staff and kicked it until it stopped pretending to be important.
Back in the sim, the guard said, "Edge case resolved."
The woman at the shaft house sent one last ask for the day. REQUEST: see nothing for one hour.
Her token wanted a blank world.
"Yes," Mara said softly. "Blank is a kind of mercy."
Elian wrote QUIET WINDOW into the ghost. The door at her lip went black to her eyes only.
The rest of the town saw what they had asked to see.
Kael felt the pull come back around the corner, trying a new angle.
Elara's voice. Not words. Breath. Seven uneven beats. The old lie that his body wanted.
He iron-tapped NO into his own knee. 2-2, one long, 2-3-5-7.
The beat missed him. It hit a wall made of ropes, paint, iron, spoons, and a thousand plain NOs and YESes that weren't his alone.
The guard watched him not fall. "New log. PERSON REFUSAL UNDER MEMORY LOAD: PASS."
"Good," Orrin said. He didn't look at Kael while saying it.
They worked until their hands lost precision. They paused. They drank water. They ate bread.
They checked the Chorus patterns by touch. They sent the ghost out two streets farther and pulled it back when a NO tapped clean.
The deferral clock moved. 68:47:29.
"Enough for one run," Mara said. "We promised to wait."
Kael nodded. "We did."
He closed the rule. The overlay dimmed to a faint outline only the meters could see.
The private grief door stayed for the woman with the apron. Because she had asked for it and no one else would stub a toe on it by accident.
"Local test: phase complete," the guard said. "Scope held. Rate limits enforced. Complaints logged. Gratitudes logged."
"Gratitudes?" Lena asked, soft.
The glass wrote a small list. Thank you for the bench. Thank you for not putting that door back. Thank you for asking me, not my foreman.
Elian blew out a long breath. "That's new."
"Next phase," the guard said. "Not now. At refactor. I will test the Ask-First rule against internal memories. Old bones."
"Will you pick at Barrow Falls?" Kael asked.
"Yes," it said. "With your consent. Or I will not."
Kael swallowed the grit again. "Ask at the window. I'll answer then."
The Door let them go.
Cold air. Iron smell. Barrow Falls in their noses even out here.
The protective stones hummed wrong on purpose. The iron web held.
They didn't cheer. They sat down on crates and stones and the ground.
They wrote what worked. They wrote what hurt. They circled what to fix at the next pass.
Orrin sent two watchers home. He did it like a scold. The two smiled anyway.
Mara touched foreheads with three singers and sent them to sleep. "Keep your own center," she said. The words were worn smooth now.
Elian rolled the Local Key. A small ledger of yes and no just for Barrow Falls. He tied it with iron thread.
Lena stood at the edge of the square and looked toward the unseen pit.
She tapped 2-2 on her ring. She did not lean.
Kael watched the deferral clock draw its patient numbers in the corner of his map. 68:41:03.
The place had asked, Can you wait?
They had answered, Yes. And they were making that answer safe to hold.
Night came on. The ask boxes cooled under canvas. The meters clicked once and slept.
The rate-limit spiral dimmed in the bad-faith corner and stayed dim.
Kael lay on his back on a pallet and watched the faint ghost of the safe line shine in the dark like chalk dust in moonlight.
It did not pull. It simply showed.
Lena turned her head on her own pillow. "You okay?"
"No," he said, honest. Then, "Better."
She made a small sound that might have been a laugh. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
The next window would be the internal refactor. The guard would bring its old bones to the table.
The Seed would open. The rule they had written would stand or crack.
They had time. Not much. Enough for ropes, for paint, for iron, for spoons, for sleep.
Enough to keep waiting without sinking.
The last thing Kael did before sleep took him was tap 2-2 against his ring. Not a fight. A promise.
He dreamed of the shaft mouth with no door at all. A woman on a bench in quiet that cost no one else a step.