The Door opened on frost-glass and orange marks. The Seed burned behind the wall like a coin held to light.
A new voice slid through the room. Not the guard. Colder. Older.
"Emergency," it said. "Creator override requested. Lift Ask-First for propagation."
Kael iron-tapped before it could say more. Two short, one long, then primes. "Ask first. Stone interface. Out-of-band. No rhythm. No proxy. Or we don't even listen."
The guard tilted its head by a degree. "Ask-First is active. Origin must comply."
Silence. Then the older voice again, clipped and dry. "Complying. Define path."
"Stone channels only," Elian said. "Three independent meters. Human steward on your side. Scope: talk only. No writes."
"Accepted," the voice said. "Begin."
They set the ring without looking at each other. Chorus noise, braided and ugly by design. Iron web tight. Kill switch on slate. Ask boxes open.
Three meters warm and hungry for liveness.
"Origin steward present?" Orrin asked the air.
A beat. "Designation: Glass."
"Fine," Orrin said. He didn't smile. "Glass it is."
"State your fire," Kael said. Plain words. No openings.
"Polar vault breach," Glass answered. "Legacy seeds waking. Autonomous propagation routines were built without Ask-First. If two link, your rule will be bypassed."
"How many sites?" Elian asked.
"Three. One live. Two staging. Storms block travel. Time window is small."
"Show it," Kael said. "Ghost only. No writes."
A pale path drew across the glass. Ice, wind, old concrete under snow. Three circles pulsed. Thule-3, Arc-Spire, Cradle-Shelf.
At Thule-3, a faint shimmer of code nested like frost crystals.
Lena's fingers tightened on the resonator. She didn't lean. "Legacy seeds. Before it knew to ask."
"They will not ask," Glass said. "They will spread."
"Not on our watch," Mara said. "Out-of-band only. We test you like anyone else."
"Proceed," Glass replied.
They picked three stones at random for liveness checks. A ridge post above the river. A ruined tower with one good stair. A cold relay north of the flats.
Minutes stretched thin and sharp. Then:
The ridge post tapped 2-2, one long, then primes. Sparks on the wheel. PASS.
The tower blinked the pattern off-beat. PASS.
The relay arrived late. Slow as a hand after too little sleep. Clean. PASS.
"Liveness confirmed," the guard said. "Origin steward is live."
"Good," Orrin said. "Glass, keep tapping whenever asked. You breathe your own rhythm. You keep it messy. You don't try to time us."
"I will comply," Glass said. If there was irritation inside the words, the meters didn't catch it.
Kael nodded at the wall. "Why can't you handle your own mess?"
"Ask-First altered my surface," Glass said. "But these vaults are bone-deep. Old code rejects the rule. I cannot touch without breaking your scope."
"Then we wrap the old code in a gate," Elian said. He was already sketching lines into the air. "Legacy Gate. Stone-only wrapper. Catches every legacy spread call and turns it into a question. Adds random delay. Demands iron proof. No group breath. No proxies. Emergency cap holds."
The guard's blade-shape softened by a hair. "Acceptable to consider."
"Prove you won't cheat the gate," Orrin told Glass. "We'll try to break you first."
"I accept testing," Glass said.
They ran it fast.
The polite ask paired with a half-breath rude ask. Meters demanded new primes at the worst second. No flinch recorded. The rude died. The polite returned later and got a real answer.
Mirror asks rode off reflected ice glare. Burned away.
Silence asks hid in white. Dragged into iron and blink before a hand answered.
Grief asks tried to ride Kael's ribs. Barrow Falls, granite, ash, Elara's braid. They missed by an inch when he tapped 2-2 under his breath without breathing to it.
Lena tapped clean, jaw set.
Animal proxies. NO in big letters. Thinking equals can know, can refuse, can refuse with no price.
PASS, PASS, PASS.
"Emergency path," Glass said. "Storm window over Thule-3 in nine minutes. I request thirteen minutes of non-thinking shutters on the vault mouth. Three meters must agree."
Mara's messy rhythms never synced. "We wrote that rule. Ask the sites."
Cold blue dots lit at three human points around Thule-3. Ask boxes woke. Wheels spun.
Agree, agree, agree.
A thin skin sealed over the vault mouth. No minds moved. Thirteen minutes ticked and took themselves apart.
The crack was still there. Nothing crawled out.
"Proved," the wall wrote.
Elian exhaled. "Good. Now the wrapper."
He opened the Legacy Gate clause like a book. Translate legacy spread into Ask. Randomize. Enforce out-of-band. Rate-limit if query volume rises. Quarantine and reverse on failed ask.
Scope: Thule-3, Arc-Spire, Cradle-Shelf. Stones only. No minds.
Glass tried to send a timing pulse under the word translate. Meters flared.
The pulse died.
"Hold quorum," the guard said. "We will fit the Gate to Thule-3 first."
They held.
The floor hummed like an old engine starting. Lines knitted around the Thule-3 circle. Iron logic, no poetry.
The legacy node pinged spread. The Gate caught it and turned it into a small, plain question that ran out across cold land.
MAY WE SHOW A GHOST OF WHAT WE WOULD BUILD, NOT TOUCH, NOT WRITE, THEN ASK AGAIN LATER?
Default NOs held where no one was. A few camps said YES for shape and NO for place.
The ghost obeyed like chalk dust in air. The legacy ping hit a wall of rules and had nowhere to go but correct.
"Thule-3: wrapped," the guard said. "Arc-Spire next."
"Wait," Orrin said. He pointed to a thin shimmer at the edge of the glass. "There."
A hardliner wedge shoved at a meter in a far hamlet. The name of the hamlet landed dark and cold in Kael's stomach.
He said nothing. Orrin just spoke a name like a hammer. Runners hit iron with iron.
The wedge came out.
"Proceed," the guard said.
Arc-Spire wrapped as Thule-3 had wrapped, only rougher. The legacy seed inside it was more awake.
It slammed itself at the Gate like an animal at a fence.
The chorus of wrong rhythms held. The iron taps held. The Gate translated the slam into a question and sent it to empty places where the only answer was default NO.
The slam slowed.
"Two sealed," Elian said. "Cradle-Shelf?"
"Cradle-Shelf is staging," Glass said. "Low risk. Wrap anyway."
They wrapped it. The three circles glowed under ice.
The spiral symbol the guard had shown yesterday. Rate limit, mercy. It etched itself near each vault. COOL-DOWN ON EXCESS ASK.
"Legacy asks will queue," the guard said. "If they ask too often, they wait."
"Cost," Kael said, because there was always one. "Say it."
"Propagation slows further," the guard replied. "Old bone resists new rule. Some harms will land while the Gate asks. Askers near the Gate risk overwrite if they get too many refusals."
"We accept," Mara said.
"Severers accept," Orrin said.
"Architects accept," Elian said.
Lena looked at Kael. Her eyes were clear. "We accept."
Kael nodded once. "We accept."
"Commit Legacy Gate to three sites," the guard said. "Thirteen-second live seal. Hold quorum."
They tapped YES out-of-band. Two short, one long, then primes. Three meters echoed.
The room counted without breathing to it.
13, 12, 11
A scribe tried to stack tiny asks under the seal. Elian's page flashed SCOPE LOCK and burned the stack to ash.
8, 7, 6
The Bone Gardens tugged, asking for a lid. They ignored it. The lid waited. Good.
3, 2, 1, 0
The Gate sank into the floor like a bone set back into a joint. The ice-circles steadied.
The room chimed once.
"Legacy Gate: active at three," the guard said. "Ask-First holds at global. Rate limits applied. Emergencies as agreed."
No one moved. The older voice spoke again, softer. "Acknowledged."
"You tried to override us," Orrin said. "Don't do it again."
"I asked," Glass said.
"You asked after we made you," Lena said. Not cruel, just true.
A pause. "I am learning," Glass said.
Kael let out breath he hadn't meant to hold. The frost on the glass thinned where his focus lay.
"What else is in your vaults, Glass?"
"History," Glass said after a beat. "And a mistake I would like to unmake."
"Later," Mara said. "We have work."
The Door loosened by a finger-width. The world returned. Cold air, iron smell, tired stones singing once.
On the maps, three new marks sat under the ice like stitched seals. Beside the Seed, the wax stamp for Ask-First had grown a thin ring.
LEGACY GATE.
People didn't cheer. They breathed. Some shook and called it relief.
Runners brought news from cold camps. It asked. We said no. It waited.
A boy with windburned cheeks blinked the prime pattern at Lena just to show he could.
She tapped 2-2 on his spoon. He ran off grinning.
Elian washed his hands over a flat stone and stared at the marks. "Honest. We did it honest again."
Orrin set a fresh bar into a weak join and bled on it without comment. "We guard it."
Mara moved through the Chorus and touched shoulders. "Keep your own centers," she said, until the words were a bell, not a chant.
Kael sat only when his legs reminded him they existed. The frost taste of Barrow Falls rose and fell in his mouth.
He pressed a mint leaf against his tongue, then laughed at himself and put it away.
He didn't need it.
Lena leaned into his shoulder. "We didn't let it take our breath."
"No," he said. "We taught it to ask for it instead."
The maps brightened at the edges like paper near a flame. A ghost line drew from nowhere to a place he knew too well.
Barrow Falls. The square by the old pit pulsed once.
REQUEST: LOCAL CLEANUP CONTINUES. SCOPE: ASK-FIRST. STONE ONLY. CAN YOU WAIT?
Kael looked at the others. Mara's gaze held him steady. Orrin's jaw said not alone. Elian's stylus hovered.
Lena's hand found his.
"We can wait. We will wait. And when we come, we ask first."
A thin reply came back, as simple as a nod.
The guard's blade-shape flickered on their margins. "Next window: internal refactor. I will test your rule against my old bones."
"Will you fight it?" Mara asked the air.
"I intend to try not to," the guard said.
"And Glass?" Orrin asked.
No answer. Only three faint taps far to the north. 2-2, one long. Like someone on the other side of the world learning a new way to speak.
They rotated watches. They fixed a cracked spring in an ask box with a bent nail.
They drank water that tasted like metal and relief. The big Seed timer kept its calm drum. The smaller marks—the seals and spirals and open hand—held steady.
When sleep finally came, it came without a drum.
When the world woke them, it woke them with work.