Back in Kael's apartment, Beta pinged softly.
Kael opened it lazily, still groggy.
Then sat up straight.
[NOTICE: NEW HUMAN PATTERN DETECTED.][CANDIDATE_ROLE: CITY EVALUATOR.][PRELIMINARY METRICS: HIGH MERCY BIAS / STRONG LOCALISM / LOW COLLATERAL TOLERANCE.]
Kael blinked.
"Someone else?" he whispered.
Haneul looked up from her bowl.
"What?" she asked.
Kael turned the display toward her.
"Oh," she said softly. "It's… starting."
"Yeah," he said.
She lifted her spoon.
"So what do we do?"
Kael stared at the glowing data point on the map.
A new human stepping onto the board.
Another potential voice in the argument between shards, Executors, the System, and the dying-but-not-dead Root.
He exhaled.
"We watch," he said. "We help if they stumble."
"And if they take the wrong path?" Haneul asked.
Kael thought of Unknown_3.
Of Grayroot.
Of the Root glitch.
"We talk," he said. "Argue. Push back. Like we're doing now."
"And if talking fails?" she asked quietly.
Kael's expression sharpened.
"Then," he said, "we make sure the System—and whatever comes next—learns the right lessons from the right people."
Haneul nodded.
Her shard hummed in agreement.
The city map pulsed with dozens of nodes, hundreds of patterns, and now one new spark of human will.
The world was changing.
Not all at once.
One floor at a time.
One node at a time.
One new Evaluator at a time.