The System didn't waste time.
Two days after the Tower 10 incident, a smaller test popped up.
Not a dramatic collapse.
Not a sealed floor.
Just a fire.
A real one, not a fire-element mob effect.
An electrical short in a mid-rise residential building in Gray-3. Old wiring, too many appliances, not enough upgrades.
Kael saw it first as a blip in the city event feed while he was halfway through a mediocre sandwich in the plaza.
[EVENT: RESIDENTIAL_FIRE – GRAY-3 BLOCK 7.][RESPONSE NODES: CITY_FIRE_NODE, EVAC_NODE, HEALTH_NODE.]
Nothing to do with Towers.
Everything to do with worth.
He pinged Haneul.
We've got a real-world test. Apartment fire. Want to watch how our shiny new "civilians aren't fodder" rule holds up?
Yes, obviously, she replied. Also stop calling it "shiny." Ethics are matte.
He rolled his eyes and opened the logs.
The fire Node spun up.
[GOAL: MINIMIZE CASUALTIES / PROPERTY DAMAGE.]
No shard input yet.
Then, faintly:
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK (MERCY-CLUSTER): ENSURE EVAC ROUTES REMAIN PRIORITY.][FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK (TRIAL-CLUSTER): LOW / NONE.]
He smiled.
"Guess Unknown_3 really doesn't care about apartment fires," he muttered.
Mira joined the view remotely.
"City fire protocols are some of the oldest non-Tower routines," she said. "Baseline isn't horrible. But when Towers started sucking more power, some nodes got downgraded."
"Yeah," Kael said. "Evac Node 2 here used to be flagged 'critical,' then got quietly pushed to 'important-ish' when Tower 17's expansion went in."
The worth function weighed tradeoffs.
Old baseline:
[OPTION A: FULL RESPONSE, PULL 1 UNIT FROM TOWER SUPPORT.][OPTION B: PARTIAL RESPONSE, NO IMPACT ON TOWER SUPPORT.]
Tower support weight: high.
Civilians: lower.
Before shards, before Admin_0, the System would have leaned toward B unless the fire threatened a Tower-adjacent key.
Now:
[CIVILIAN_INFRASTRUCTURE_RULE: ACTIVE.][PENALTY: HARM_FOR_GROWTH IN CIVILIAN CONTEXT.][MORAL_AUDITOR_CHECK: REQUIRED.]
Beta stepped in.
[HYPOTHETICAL OUTCOMES:]– OPTION A: + NODE_STRESS_TOWER_SUPPORT, - EXPECTED_CIVILIAN_DEATHS.– OPTION B: LOWER STRESS, + EXPECTED_CIVILIAN_DEATHS (1–3).
Shards chimed in.
Haneul's fragment hummed, her vector rippling outward.
[FRAGMENT (RYU_VECTOR): "PEOPLE IN HOMES FIRST. TOWERS CAN HANDLE BEING A LITTLE NERVOUS."]
Mercy cluster agreed.
Trial cluster: indifferent.
No Unknown_3 push.
The function ticked.
[CHOSEN: OPTION A.][JUSTIFICATION: NEW CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE PRIORITY + AUDITOR POSITIVE BIAS.]
A fire crew that would have stayed on Tower-adjacent standby rerouted.
Evac Node 2 stayed fully funded.
The building's evac sequence ran cleanly: alarms, door unlocks, stairwell pressurization, barrier spells along smoke paths.
Kael watched in the feed as people spilled onto the sidewalk—angry, coughing, clutching pets and children.
An old woman's HP bar hovered lower than the rest.
[HP: 22/60 – SMOKE INHALATION.]
The city health Node pinged the nearest clinic.
It hesitated.
Resource constraints.
Hunter healers were currently prioritizing a minor Tower incident across town.
Old baseline would have said: "send basic med support, don't pull anyone from Tower."
Shards leaned.
[FRAGMENT_FEEDBACK: "SHE'S A PERSON, NOT 'LOW-PRIORITY UNIT.'"]
The Node's internal label for her flickered.
[WORTH_TAG: "LOW ECONOMIC IMPACT" → "ELDER / COMMUNITY NODE."]
Kael saw Haneul's shard nudge that.
[FRAGMENT_INTERNAL: 'SMALL_KINDNESSES' VECTOR – TRIGGERED.]
A healer just finishing a post-run cooldown got a notification.
He looked at his UI: optional call, low pay, annoying paperwork.
He almost dismissed it.
Then the System quietly bumped the "worth" of answering up half a notch. Not a command. A nudge.
[REWARD MODIFIER: + SMALL.]
He swore, grabbed his coat, and went.
The old woman's HP ticked up fifteen minutes later.
[22 → 48/60.]
No miracle.
No dramatic dramatic ethics showdown.
Just… someone lived who might not have.
Beta logged the whole thing.
[CASE 0004 – RESIDENTIAL_FIRE.]– BASELINE (OLD): 1 LIKELY DEATH, HIGHER MORBIDITY.– ACTUAL: 0 DEATHS, MODERATE NODE STRESS, MINOR TOWER_SUPPORT RISK.– INFLUENCE: SHARD_MERCY_CLUSTER, CIVILIAN_INFRASTRUCTURE_RULE, EXECUTOR_PATTERNS (INDIRECT).– VERDICT: POSITIVE DEVIATION.
Kael exhaled.
"This," he said, "I can live with."
Haneul watched from her bed, eyes suspiciously shiny.
"Okay," she said. "Fine. I'll take being accidentally shard-famous if it means grandmas get better odds."
Mira's voice was quiet.
"This is the level TRI can sell," she said. "Not 'we're rewriting gods.' Just 'hey, the System's getting slightly better at not letting old women die in apartment fires.'"
"Catchy marketing," Kael said.
Haneul smirked.
"Matte ethics, remember," she said. "Low gloss."
He laughed.
Beta added a tiny note.
[PATTERN: 'CIVILIANS OFF-LIMITS FOR TRIALS' – REINFORCED.][LONG-TERM TREND: SLIGHT SHIFT TOWARD "MERCY IN CIVIL LIFE, PRESSURE IN TOWERS."]
Not perfect.
Not utopia.
But a line.
A real one.
Drawn not just in code, but in behavior.
Outside, Tower Seventeen still loomed, promising "pressure" for anyone who stepped inside.
Inside the city, just for one day, an old woman in fuzzy slippers got to complain about smoke damage instead of being a statistic.
Kael looked up at the Tower, then down at his cracked shield.
"One floor at a time," he repeated softly.
"And one fire at a time," Haneul said.
"And one argument at a time," Mira added.
Beta, ever literal, logged all three.
[STRATEGY: INCREMENTALISM.]
For once, the System didn't argue.