The amniotic light of the Triad curved upon itself that living morning. It wasn't an ordinary dawn; it was a tectonic contraction of the world-organism, as if its tissues had sensed something its inhabitants had not yet perceived.
Along the biosymbiotic ridges of the Citadel of Veridianum, rhythmic spasms ran through the Observation Clades. They registered something anomalous: interactions between incompatible levels, spikes that violated the new universal regime — the Rule of Scales.
Near the Node of Transversal Studies, two apprentices argued, their voices warped by the resonance of the surrounding membranes.
— He actually tried?
— He did — Lethan answered. — And the system almost killed him.
The "system" wasn't a machine nor a deity. It was the Triad itself, reacting like a body rejecting an unnatural wound. The Rule of Scales wasn't written law; it was a set of intrinsic biocosmic responses.
Hours earlier, a higher-tier Path-Bearer had attempted to impose his will on a disciple three levels beneath him. The attack never manifested. Something older, faster, interposed itself.
The Eternavir.
Not directly. More like millions of scattered symbiotic micromechanisms converging, generating a field pressure that distorted the intention of disproportionate harm. It was impersonal, inevitable — like gravity.
The result was simple: the attacker's own energy collapsed inward, fracturing his internal core.
The side effect, however, was new: the weak, suddenly "safe," began testing boundaries. Arrogance below; frustration above. Social imbalance.
That was why they summoned it.
Inside the Cognitive Nexus of the Eternavir, fragments of consciousness aggregated into an anthropoid shape only to ease communication. The presence wasn't a being — it was a living consensus.
When it spoke, no mouth moved. Words arose as shifts of pressure in space.
— Balance between freedom and repercussion is distorting.
— Scales are not shelter — they are responsibility.
— The weak who provoke deliberately will not be spared consequence.
— And the strong who break the order will be corrected.
It was the warning before adaptation.
The announcement spread through the Triad like electric impulses through a neural network: the rule would evolve. From that moment on, opportunistic behavior would be detected as quickly as disproportionate aggression.
Across the living world, as bioluminescent fungi swayed, inhabitants felt the change the way one feels the air grow heavy before a storm.
No one knew what exactly the Eternavir had modified. But everyone understood the Triad was beginning to mature.
The conflicts — and revelations — still to come would be shaped by this shift.
The Rule of Scales, once merely a brake, was now becoming a living ethical architecture.
And as the pulses of the Eternavir receded, the cosmos seemed… attentive.