Kael liked rooftops.
Not for the view—Gray-3's skyline was mostly apartment blocks, steam vents, neon mall signs, and the looming bulk of Tower Seventeen like a bored giant.
He liked rooftops because they were quiet.
No street-level noise.
No shard pings.
Just wind and the faint hum of city nodes working as intended for once.
He sat on the ledge, legs dangling, half a convenience-store canned coffee in hand. The sun was setting behind the Tower, making the whole building glow like a lit fuse.
Mira climbed up from the access ladder, brushing dust off her hands.
"You pick the coldest rooftops," she said.
"Better than my apartment," he replied. "Joon keeps practicing glaive arcs in the hallway."
She sat beside him, a respectful meter away.
"You okay?" she asked.
He shrugged.
"That's a big question," he said. "Scale it down."
She nodded once.
"Are you okay about the Root glitch night?"
He considered.
A gust of wind ruffled his hair.
"I'm… weirdly okay," he said. "During transit day, I felt like I was fighting the System. Last night, it felt like the System needed help. That's different."
"It did need help," Mira said. "Even Watchdog couldn't handle the timing failures."
Kael took a sip of coffee.
"You ever feel like we're getting too good at this?" he asked.
Mira tilted her head.
"How do you mean?"
"Override triage here. Patch transit there. Slow a collapse. Rewrite a miniboss's aggro pattern."He looked at the Tower."This stuff isn't supposed to be manual. We're not supposed to be its brain."
Mira's expression softened in a way he rarely saw.
"You're not replacing the System," she said. "You're compensating for the parts that broke ten years ago."
He chuckled humorlessly.
"One day, the Root won't just twitch," he said. "It'll jerk. Harder. And we won't be able to duct-tape it mid-spasm."
"That's what TRI is trying to prepare for," Mira said. "I've already started drafting guidelines: when to override, when not to, how to balance fragment bias without ripping the value function apart."
"And what's the endgame?" he asked quietly. "Fix Root? Rebuild it? Or… replace it?"
She watched the wind whip across the rooftops.
"Honestly?" she said. "I don't think Root can be repaired. Not without ADMIN_0. Fragments are too divergent. Worth functions now have philosophical preferences. The System is less like a machine every day and more like a… distributed argument."
Kael inhaled sharply.
"That's terrifying," he said.
"That's evolution," Mira said. "Most systems that face constant stress evolve into something messy. Collaborative. Emergent."
Kael closed his eyes.
"Mira… you know Beta's been quietly building 'consensus models' off shard interactions, right?"
"Yes," she said.
"That's the System trying to form a new Root," he said.
Mira didn't flinch.
"I know," she said.
"And you're okay with that?"
"I'm okay with helping shape it," she said. "Better us than cults, or sadists, or whatever Unknown_3's shard thinks 'growth' means at 3 AM."
Kael rubbed his face.
"What if I don't want to be Root's dad?" he muttered.
Mira laughed.
"You're not its dad. You're a very grumpy babysitter. Beta is the anxious parent. And the shards are feral toddlers with philosophy degrees."
Kael snorted.
"That's the worst metaphor you've ever said," he said.
"I know," Mira said. "But you laughed, so I'm keeping it."
He leaned back on his hands.
"What about endgame for me?" he asked. "What does that look like from where you're standing?"
"Realistically?" Mira said."When the new Root stabilizes, you'll either become a formal auditor, or the System will absorb you. In the good way, not the dissolve-your-soul way. Your vector becomes part of the language it learns from."
Kael's stomach twisted.
"That sounds like dying," he said.
"It isn't," she said softly. "It's… imprinting. Leaving a fingerprint on the next version of how the world decides worth."
He swallowed.
"And Haneul?" he asked.
"Haneul is a host," Mira said. "Her shard is less about structure, more about values. She'll shape culture. People. Other shards. Not code."
"And Unknown_3?"
"A necessary counterweight," she said, sighing. "Pressure vector. Not evil. Not good. Just… sharp."
Silence settled between them.
Kael exhaled slowly.
"What if I don't want to be part of a god?" he whispered.
Mira looked at him for a long moment.
Then said:
"Then you carve out enough humanity in this process that whatever comes after respects your choice."
He stared at her.
"That's possible?" he asked.
"It has to be," she said. "Or the world isn't worth saving."
He let that sink in.
The Tower lights flickered as a party cleared Floor 8, sending a celebratory ripple across the plaza below.
Kael stood.
"Okay," he said. "Enough philosophy. Let's go before my coffee gets cold."
"It's already cold," Mira said.
"I know," he said. "Let's go anyway."