The silence did not last.
That was the first lesson.
The second was harder: silence, once broken, never returned in the same shape.
Within forty-eight hours of Cassian's withdrawal, the architecture experienced its first internal contradiction, not in code, not in governance layers, but in people.
The alert came from Victor's console, flagged not as a breach but as an irregular alignment event. A cluster of institutions within the yes coalition had begun coordinating without registering their deliberations through the transparency channels.
They weren't hiding.
They simply weren't sharing.
Victor enlarged the feed, his jaw tightening as patterns resolved into intent. "They're creating a sub-consensus."
Dante leaned over his shoulder. "Define it."
"They're agreeing with the architecture in principle," Victor said, "but not in execution. They want faster outcomes. Less deliberation. Emergency authority when consensus stalls."
