The request came in the morning, neat as a formal letter and sharp as a scalpel.
Kurogane's envoy wanted a face-to-face.
Not the casual visits. Not the remote data feeds. He wanted to meet Shinra in person and speak "for the city's stability."
Mizuki read it aloud in the operations room and didn't bother softening the edges.
"They want access. Unredacted footage. Full biometric streams when requested. A liaison embedded within Sanctum."
Her voice was flat.
Kaizen whistled softly. "They want to set a roommate and call it oversight."
Riku made a face. "We don't have a spare room with bars. That's inconvenient."
Yuna folded her hands. "They'll test boundaries. We decide which ones crack."
Shinra listened to the talk as if it were a tide and not the shore. The words meant rules. Rules could be doors. Doors could lock.
He'd seen that sort of logic before. He'd been on the other side of it.
Arios hummed in his head, a low, assessing tone. Probability of coercive escalation: non-negligible. Recommend caution protocols.
"Ryou is the local point," Mizuki said. "He's sympathetic. He'll buffer. But the Envoy will press."
"Envoy Kurogane is not a man who asks politely," Kaizen said. "He smiles and the city levies a tax."
Shinra felt the old life fold like a memory under new paper. He had been an object in the last era, a fulcrum. He did not want to be that here.
"I'll meet him," he said.
The room exhaled in a dozen small ways. Some relief. Some nerves.
Mizuki's eyes were sharp. "We prep. No repeats. No uncontrolled displays. You'll be accompanied. We set terms. No biometric stream unless you authorize. No embedded liaison."
Kaizen added, "We make them ask twice for everything. Then we give them the veneer of cooperation."
Ryou contacted them that afternoon. He arrived in person, gait steady, uniform neat.
"Sanctum," he said. "I appreciate you hosting this. I'll do my best to ensure the Envoy understands our constraints."
Mizuki's reply was curt. "Ryou, we expect nothing less than courtesy. And nothing more than residency."
He nodded. "Understood."
They set the meeting in a neutral room at Sanctum — a space with glass that looked out over the city but had controlled entry points.
Kurogane arrived in a suit that seemed to have been ironed by someone who loved rules. He moved slow, eyes scanning, calculating.
Behind him, two officials followed like thrummed notes.
He bowed once. Not much. Enough.
"Guild Sanctum," he said. "Thank you for receiving me."
Kaizen rose to meet him. "We invited you. You're welcome."
Kurogane's gaze settled on Shinra as if reading the room's new fulcrum.
"You are Shinra," he said.
Shinra inclined his head. "I am."
Kurogane's smile was polite but not warm. "I will be frank. Central Authority does not yet have a category for what you represented in the Convergence. We must decide—fast—how to legislate your existence. To protect citizens. To prevent panic."
"You mean, to prevent people from choosing the smaller terror over mass death again?" Kaizen replied.
Kurogane's eyes flicked to the rest of them. "We must make assessments. We must allocate oversight."
Mizuki cut in. "Oversight does not mean ownership. We will not hand Shinra over to an unnamed committee."
Kurogane's fingers tapped a silent rhythm. "Then we negotiate."
That word landed between them like a promise and a threat.
Ryou spoke quietly. "Envoy, we propose joint observation panels. Periodic reviews. No embedded liaison unless there is a clear legal order."
Kurogane considered, then nodded. "We will accept a phased oversight. For now. But we reserve the right to request escalated access should risk indicators exceed acceptable thresholds."
Mizuki's jaw tightened. "What are your thresholds?"
"A combination of amplitude, unpredictability, and collateral potential," Kurogane said. "As you are aware, Catastrophe-tier events cannot be tolerated."
Shinra's voice was calm. "I will not allow the city to be used as a laboratory."
"You will accept oversight," Kurogane countered. "You will provide certain data streams under controlled circumstances. You will agree to emergency protocols that allow Authority to act should you become a danger."
"Which is exactly what we do not agree to," Kaizen said. "You don't get to make emergency calls on our people without cause."
Kurogane's smile thinned. "Guildmaster Kaizen, this is not power play. This is logistics."
Kaizen's eyes were small and hard. "Then make a logistic that respects people."
Ryou interjected with the one word that always mattered: "Compromise."
They spent hours on compromise. Hours on words and committee names, on percentages and signals, on who had the power to flip a switch in the middle of the night.
Mizuki insisted on encryption parameters and human oversight with Sanctum's delegates present.
Kurogane insisted on a hotline to Central for emergencies and access to aggregated anomaly logs.
Shinra watched each give-and-take like a lesson in how to avoid being caged.
At one point, Kurogane turned to him and spoke directly.
"You are a variable," he said. "Variables are not comfortable for those who run systems. You can be a deterrent. You can be a weapon. You can be a disaster. Which will you be?"
Shinra met his gaze. "I will be a choice."
Kurogane's eyebrows rose in a tiny arc. "That is not an answer."
"It is," Shinra replied. "I will be what I choose to be."
The envoy's mouth tightened. He liked control. He did not like ambiguity.
Outside, the city hummed. Inside, they crafted the treaty in small increments.
Ryou advocated for monitoring that protected privacy. Kaizen demanded that Sanctum retain custody. Mizuki built a legal and technical fence that read like an art piece: precise, cunning, with gaps only a fool would fall into.
Kurogane finally signed under conditions that left margins and caveats.
"Authority will respect your custody," he said. "But we will have access to aggregated data and a unilateral right to call emergency intervention after a council review."
Kaizen's response was blunt: "We will not sign away our people."
They left the signatures hanging like fossils on the table.
Ryou sealed the verbal agreement with a thin, thoughtful nod.
"We will form a joint committee," he said. "For oversight, not ownership. The Envoy accepts this for now."
Kurogane's voice was quiet. "For now."
They all knew the warning built into those two words.
After the meeting, cameras swarmed.
Official footage played: handshakes, smiles, firm press statements.
The city wanted calm.
Politicians wanted process.
Commentators spun the meeting into frames people could digest.
But under the public face, lines were drawn.
Kaizen and Arisa exchanged private messages with brittle humor. Obsidian Crown promised a quiet watch and a not-so-quiet blockade if Authority crossed a line.
Ryou sent Shinra an encrypted note that read: You have my personal assurance. Not a law, but my promise.
Shinra read it, fingers steady, and replied: I will remember.
Arias, in the quiet between his thoughts, hummed another concern. They will want transparency. Transparency invites leverage. Prepare containment that is not visible.
Shinra looked at Mizuki.
"How do we prepare?" he asked.
She tapped a screen and drew a line around their data flows. "We create mirrors," she said. "Decoy logs. Sandboxing. We present enough to keep Kurogane satisfied and not so much they can sue us into a corner."
"That sounds dangerous," Yuna said.
"It is," she said. "But it's how you make leverage when you don't have power to back a gun."
Shinra's hands tightened into fists on the table. He felt the seal like a muscle under strain. The overlay flared for a second—an echo of a tribunal and a man making decisions over a crowd. He steadied himself with the breathing count.
Three in. Two hold. Five out.
He would not be a tool for the city. He would not be a lever for politicians.
But the agreement—signed with careful, frosted ink—would follow them.
That night, when the guild gathered, the mood was brittle but not broken.
They ate in shifts.
They argued in softer voices.
They planned contingencies with the meticulous fervor of people who loved their friends more than they trusted institutions.
Akari came and sat quiet, watching the group like someone listening to an argument in a foreign language.
At one point she leaned toward Shinra.
"You made them promise," she said. "That will keep us safe for a while."
"It will buy us time," he corrected.
She nodded. "Time matters."
He thought of the libraries, the shard, the man who read echoes.
He thought of the root learning rhythms and the Envoy smiling like a knife.
And he thought of a small thing: a promise from a man named Ryou.
It was not legal. It was human.
It might hold.
Or it might be enough to make someone else sharpen a plan.
Arias' voice was low and closer than usual. We are being watched by more than Authority now. The net listens. Other nodes hear the labels they make.
Shinra touched the back of his hand where the IV had been days ago. The skin there felt scarred and new.
He exhaled.
"We keep walking," he said.
Yuna's hand found his across the table.
"Always," she said.
For now, they had a procedural shield.
For now, they had a promise.
Outside, the city slept under watchful stars.
Beneath the watch, the net whispered and the root listened.