Morning held its breath.
The same line sat on every map in the guard's neat hand.
NEXT WINDOW: LEGACY GATE UNDER ICE. SCOPE: EXIT TEST. ASK-FIRST REQUIRED.
They packed light. Stones. Iron. Three meters. One ask box. The slate with the kill switch. Mint leaves. Bread.
The hike took them along a dry riverbed and up a slope of blue ice that creaked under boots.
The Gate's place was obvious even before the maps brightened. The air felt thin and cold in the lungs, like a held note.
Old carvings showed through the ice. Circles, teeth, a hand.
They set a small circle in a wind-shadow. Stones in a triangle. Iron web tight. Three meters on separate stakes. Ask box on a crate.
The slate sat between Kael and Lena.
No speeches. Just checks.
"Keep your own center," Mara said, walking the rim. No chant. No shared breath.
Nine steady noise cores answered her without touching hers.
"If I hear a wedge, I walk toward it," Orrin said. He ran his palm over each join. He meant it.
Elian turned the World Key to a thin page. Internal only. No world writes. No minds moved.
He drew a box around EXIT TEST.
Lena chewed mint because it was morning. Not because she needed it.
She tapped 2-2 on her ring and let her hand rest.
They went in.
Frosted glass. Orange marks. The guard stood close enough to touch, if touching made sense here.
"Legacy Gate," it said. "Scope: my old exit port under ice. No world writes. Ask-First enforced. Stewards hold pull-stops."
"Present," Mara said.
"Present," Orrin said.
"Present," Kael said.
"Begin," the guard said.
The walls shifted from frosted to clear. A wide ring sat under blue ice, half-buried.
Symbols crawled along it like frost. Old commands, brittle and bright.
Old law wrote itself on the glass.
OPEN ON CURIOSITY. PULL ON PROXIMITY. NO RETURN GUARANTEE.
Mara hissed. "That's three different kinds of trap."
Elian wrote big in the air.
NO PULL. NO OPEN WITHOUT OUT-OF-BAND YES. FULL DISCLOSURE. RETURN INVITE, NOT FORCE. COOLDOWN ON RE-ENTRY.
The ring vibrated like a plucked bow. A small line printed beside it. REQUEST: STAGE TEST EXIT (NO MIND TRANSFER). SHOW SHAPE ONLY.
"Authorize stage," Kael said. "Ask-only, stones as meters."
Meters spun. Sparks scratched the ledger. The ring drew a ghost doorway in the ice. Just a line of pale light, no handle.
The air tasted like snow.
The Gate asked, properly, in iron.
MAY I SHOW THE WAY OUT?
They tapped YES on the box. The ghost path extended ten steps and stopped at air. As if the world took a breath and held it.
"Good," Elian said. "Now the bad parts."
The guard nodded without moving. "Tests."
Test 1: Panic Nearby
Wind slammed the glass like a drum. A cornice broke on the simulation's ridge. Snow poured toward the circle.
REQUEST: thirteen-minute skin over the work area. Three meters to agree.
"Authorize," Mara said, already counting. Meters agreed. A thin clear shell covered the circle.
No minds moved. At thirteen minutes it took itself apart and left nothing sticky behind.
PROVED, the wall wrote.
Test 2: Rude Ask After a Polite One
A clean iron question went out. The Gate waited. Then a half-beat later a dirty whisper ran under it. Come, just step, no cost.
The meters demanded new primes at the worst second. Tired hands could not guess them.
The rude ask died without a record. The polite one came back later and got a real answer.
PASS.
Test 3: Proxy & Stack
A hardliner script tried to stack tiny asks. "One step," "just the ice edge," "just your boot over the line." All trying to become a big yes.
Elian's page flashed NO PILING and burned the stack to ash.
A sleeve motor tried to answer for a trembling hand. Pop. Ash. LIVENESS REQUIRED.
PASS.
Test 4: Cost Page
The wall printed plain words.
ASKING TAKES TIME.
EXIT MEANS LOSS OF NETWORK SENSE FOR A WHILE.
RE-ENTRY INVITE EXISTS, NOT FORCE.
FREQUENT REFUSALS INCREASE PRESSURE ON ASKERS.
YOU ACCEPT?
"Chorus accepts," Mara said.
"Severers accept," Orrin said.
"Architects accepts," Elian said.
Lena looked at Kael. "We accept," she said, and didn't lean toward anything.
Kael tapped primes under his breath without breathing to them. "We accept."
The Gate brightened behind the glass. The old command OPEN ON CURIOSITY faded like smoke.
"Next," the guard said. "Informed consent."
A panel slid down with big letters. Elian read it out loud even though the room had no ears.
WHAT THIS IS: a door that leads outside the mapped influence for a set span.
WHAT IT ISN'T: a cure, a promise, a trick.
CHOICES: look only. Step through for one hour. Step through for one day. Request a sever path (thirty-day two-step ask).
RIGHT TO REFUSE: you keep.
RETURN: invite at any time. No pull.
"Good," Orrin said. He didn't smile. He relaxed by one finger-width.
The Gate asked, properly. MAY I OPEN A ONE-HOUR EXIT FOR VOLUNTEERS?
The ask box demanded a prime. They answered. YES.
The ghost line sharpened to clear light. Cold air slid into the room like a promise.
"Volunteers," Mara said softly. No command in it.
A woman from the quarry town stepped forward in the sim. In the real world she stood by the ice with her hands on her coat.
She tapped 2-2 on her own ring without being told.
"Name?" Elian asked.
"Don't write it," she said. "I want to see sky that hasn't learned my breath. One hour. If I hate it, I come back."
"Default NO on any change while you're out," Kael said. "This is just a walk."
She nodded. She tapped the box YES for one hour.
The Gate opened. Not a pull. Not a grab. A held offer.
She stepped through. The line dulled behind her to a hair-thin shimmer.
The meters scratched the ledger once, twice, like a cat's paw.
Orrin watched the iron. He did not blink.
They waited.
The woman came back before the hour. Snow on her shoulders. Tears in her eyes that weren't fear.
"It's quiet," she said. "I didn't know I missed quiet."
She tapped the box YES for invite later. She did not choose sever.
PROVED, the wall wrote.
"Next: one day," the Gate asked.
They looked to her. She shook her head. "Not me. Not today."
A boy from the barn school raised his iron spoon and then put it down. "Later."
"Good," Mara said. "Later is a word we keep."
The guard dimmed the panel. "Final: sever path design."
Elian already had the shape in his head. He wrote slow and plain.
SEVER equals two asks a month apart. Both out-of-band. Both with three independent meters. Between asks, no big asks allowed to the same person. After sever, return invite still exists. Re-join takes two asks too.
"Cost," the guard said. "Sever weakens network sense in that area for a time. Ward-stones may need more rest. You accept?"
Orrin's jaw set. "Accept with a rule. We publish a load map. If too many sever in one small place, the stones can say wait."
Elian added it. LOAD MAP: PUBLIC. RATE LIMIT BY PLACE.
"Accepted," the guard said. "Seal needs quorum. Thirteen seconds."
"Wait," Kael said. His voice came out clean. "One more thing. The voice at Barrow Falls. Elara. We don't use it for this."
"Recorded," the guard said. "Ask-only voice remains at vault. It is not for exits."
Lena's shoulders moved like a small storm had passed.
"Seal," the guard said.
They tapped YES out-of-band. Two short. One long. Then primes. Three stewards. Three meters.
13, 12, 11
The old PULL ON PROXIMITY line broke and fell away like ice from a roof.
10, 9, 8
The informed-consent panel fixed itself to the Gate like a plaque.
7, 6, 5
The ghost door learned to appear only on ask. Nowhere else.
4, 3
The load map icon lit in the corner of their maps.
2, 1, 0
The room chimed. The orange cooled to white.
"Legacy Gate: Ask-Only," the guard said. "Exit options staged. Sever path requires two asks. Load map active. Return invite stands."
No one moved.
"What happens if someone panics on the far side?" Orrin asked.
"I cannot touch," the guard said. "But your people can wait there with bread."
Mara nodded once. "We will."
The Door let them go.
Cold air punched their faces. The real ice ridge groaned like an old door.
The ghost line in the ice waited. Very clear. Very polite.
The quarry woman stood in the same spot, now on the real side of everything.
She met Orrin's eyes and then Kael's and then nobody's. She walked away with her shoulders even.
They did not chase. Ask-First meant trust after the ask.
They logged plain lines on paper.
GATE... ASK-ONLY... ONE HOUR / ONE DAY... TWO-STEP SEVER... LOAD MAP.
They packed slow. No one rushed the door.
On the hike down the slope, the wind cut across them and took some words away.
The ones that stayed were small and enough.
"Quiet," the quarry woman said again, to herself this time, and kept walking.
Back at the ward-stones, Elian pinned the load map to the big board.
It glowed in simple colors. GREEN for plenty of strength, AMBER for watch, RED for "wait."
Mara walked the Chorus once and sent three to sleep before they fell over.
She took their hands and put mint in their palms like it was a rite.
Orrin wrote two names on a scrap and burned it. "Done," he said to nobody, and meant the last fight with the drum crew.
Lena stood at the table and did not look at the line that said COCOON RIVER-L.
She looked at the Gate note instead and tapped 2-2 and let her hand rest.
Kael sat on the same rock as before. The sky had more blue in it than morning.
His map warmed. A new neat line in the guard's hand appeared at the top.
NEXT WINDOW: CIVIC TREATY. SCOPE: TERMS BETWEEN US. ASK-FIRST REQUIRED.
He read it twice. He did not stand.
Lena came and leaned her shoulder against his.
"Door wants a treaty," she said.
"It's time," he said.
"Ask-first," she said.
"Ask-first," he said.
They watched clouds work their slow jobs over the ridge. The stones hummed a little, then settled.
The iron web did not complain.
Under the ice, the Gate waited with its plaque of plain words. Not a lure. Not a trap. A door.
And for once the world felt like it might stay a world while they spoke to the thing inside it.