Ace did not attack the town.
He returned home.
Which confused everyone.
---
The Wrong Response
"They built a prison," the baker said angrily.
"And you're just… leaving?"
Ace curled his tail.
"I'm not their enemy," he said.
"I'm their bug report."
Ravenna raised an eyebrow.
"That sounds ominous."
Ace smiled tiredly.
"It's worse."
---
The Seed
Ace sent letters.
Not instructions.
Questions.
What happens when your reassignment system is wrong?
Who decides when someone is 'inefficient'?
What happens if the decider is tired?
They went everywhere.
To guilds.
To councils.
To scholars.
Including Seris.
She read them.
And didn't reply.
---
The Gift
Ace sent a second thing.
A manual.
Not titled.
No authorship.
It described failure modes.
Not how to fix them.
How to notice them.
Small signs.
Silent signs.
The kind that appear before harm.
The manual spread.
Quietly.
---
The Unraveling Begins
In Seris's town—
An overseer hesitated.
A reassignment felt wrong.
They delayed.
Just a moment.
That delay caused a ripple.
A second overseer noticed.
Then a third.
The system slowed.
People noticed.
For the first time—
They were asked.
"Are you okay?"
The question hit harder than any revolt.
---
Seris Feels It
Seris stood alone in the plaza.
Efficiency metrics dipped.
Morale variance increased.
"Stop it," she whispered.
Not to Ace.
To the system.
But systems don't stop asking questions once taught.
---
The Mirror Turns
Elsewhere—
Other towns read the manual.
They didn't build Seris's system.
They avoided it.
Seris realized—
Too late.
Ace hadn't attacked her town.
He had changed the comparison.
Her "perfect" city was now…
Suspicious.
---
Ace Explains (Once)
A messenger arrived from Seris.
One sentence.
"You undermined me."
Ace wrote back.
One sentence.
"No. I gave people vocabulary."
---
End Beat
Seris walked through her city that night.
It still functioned.
But it felt brittle.
A man laughed too loudly.
A woman argued openly.
A child ran.
Unscheduled.
Unoptimized.
Seris felt fear.
Not of collapse.
Of losing control.
Far away—
Ace slept.
Not scheming.
Not watching.
Trusting the slow work.
Because the most dangerous idea in any rigid system—
is teaching people how to notice.