Michael arrived late and announced nothing.
He took the last empty chair in the planning room, listened for ten minutes without interrupting, and then ruined the entire discussion with a single sentence.
"Why are we assuming this needs to be solved at all?"
The room went quiet.
Lysa turned first, eyes narrowing. Kael followed, measuring the newcomer. Michael looked ordinary—mid-thirties, worn jacket, calm posture, the kind of person people overlooked until he spoke.
"It's a resource imbalance," a coordinator replied stiffly. "If we don't intervene, it escalates."
"Or it resolves itself," Michael said mildly. "Badly, maybe. But naturally."
"That's unacceptable," the coordinator snapped.
Michael smiled apologetically. "Is it unacceptable—or just uncomfortable?"
Kael leaned back, interested.
"And who are you?" Kael asked.
"Michael," he replied. "I teach history. Or I did, before my department dissolved itself trying to decide what history should be."
A few people shifted uncomfortably.
Lysa studied him. "You're not wrong," she said slowly. "But you're also not helpful."
Michael shrugged. "Depends on the goal."
Kael interjected smoothly. "The goal is to prevent collapse."
Michael nodded. "Then ask a better question."
Kael waited.
"What happens," Michael continued, "when people learn that someone will always optimize consequences away for them?"
Silence.
Lysa felt it then—the tension sharpening, the conversation no longer procedural but philosophical.
"They stop choosing," she said quietly.
Michael smiled at her. "Exactly."
Kael broke the pause. "And what would you suggest instead?"
Michael looked at him directly now. "I'd suggest you let some failures hurt."
Several people reacted at once.
"That's reckless—" "People will suffer—" "We can't allow—"
Michael raised his hands. "I didn't say ignore suffering. I said don't erase consequence."
Kael's eyes never left him. "You're arguing against intervention."
"I'm arguing against invisibility," Michael replied. "If you act, own it. If you don't, accept it. But don't build a world where no one knows who chose what."
The system fragment flagged the conversation internally—anomaly detected. Contradictory inputs without resolution.
Kael felt something unfamiliar.
Resistance.
Not loud. Not hostile.
But principled.
Lysa broke the tension. "You're assuming people want that kind of clarity."
Michael stood. "No. I'm assuming they need it."
He looked at Kael then—not challenging, not deferential.
"Centuries ago," Michael said, "a man named Kael saved the world by refusing to rule it. You're very close to undoing that."
Kael smiled politely. "Or finishing what he started."
Michael didn't argue.
"That," he said, "is exactly what worries me."
He left as quietly as he had arrived.
The room exhaled.
Lysa turned to Kael. "You just met your problem."
Kael nodded slowly. "No," he said. "I just met my reminder."
Outside, Michael stepped into the city streets, already fading back into the margins.
And deep within Kael's private system, old code pulsed—uneasy, unresolved, alive.
The rhythm had changed.
And for the first time, the path forward would not be uncontested.