The fracture did not arrive from where Marikka was looking.
It arrived from where she was no longer listening.
It happened while the neutral house breathed in its controlled silence. No sudden noise, no alarm. Only a minimal, almost polite variation in the vibration of the surfaces. As if someone had shifted a weight from one column to another without asking.
Marikka noticed it when the floor's response was delayed.
Half a beat. Enough to be wrong.
She stopped.
Cedric, who was crossing the room with a cup of water in his hand, looked at her questioningly. Marikka raised a hand: wait. She rested her fingers on the table. The wood responded, but not as before. The modulation was still regular, but underneath there was a new tension, like a chord about to be dissonant.
Aurelian was sitting near the wall, his gaze fixed on a spot he wasn't truly looking at. Since the third condition had been imposed, his way of occupying space had changed: less intentional, more present. Like someone who has stopped seeking information and now only listens to what passes by.
"What's happening?" Cedric asked.
Marikka didn't answer immediately.
She felt Serian stir in the case. Not a long tremor. A broken, irregular vibration. Error.
She wrote in the notebook:
IT SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED.
Cedric read it. "What?"
Marikka pointed to the floor. Then the door. Then the floor again.
The neutral house should not have reacted to anything that hadn't been filtered.
Yet, something was getting through.
Not a person.
An information.
A light knock on the door.
Not knocked. Signaled.
Cedric made to move. Marikka grabbed his wrist. No.
The knock came again. Identical. Courteous.
Aurelian stood up slowly. "It's not for us," he said. Not as a certainty. As a recognition. "It's... lateral."
Marikka felt the confirmation in her body. The impulse wasn't seeking her. It was seeking the frame.
The door opened without anyone touching it.
The woman they had seen at the entrance came in, but something about her was different. Not her face. Her rhythm. Her steps were too measured, as if she were walking on a line someone else had drawn.
"There is an unfiltered request," she said. She wasn't looking at Marikka. "It got through anyway."
Cedric slammed the cup on the table. "What do you mean 'anyway'?"
The woman swallowed. "It was... misclassified."
That sentence made more noise than any alarm.
Marikka felt the fracture open.
She wrote:
WHO.
The woman hesitated. A beat too long. "A secondary civic registry. It received a report..." she paused, searching for the right word "...erroneous."
Aurelian closed his eyes. "You used the name."
The woman did not deny it. "It was cited."
Cedric turned pale. "Mine?"
Silence.
The answer came from the floor: a sudden, disjointed vibration. Not from the house. From the street.
Marikka felt the city moving differently. Not curiosity. Confirmation.
A name was circulating outside the frame. Not Marikka's. Cedric's.
"No," Cedric said. "No, no—"
Marikka grabbed him by the shoulders. Breathe.
She wrote, quickly:
WHERE.
The woman spoke faster. "An assignment office. They are verifying a discrepancy between a registered alias and a human contact person."
Aurelian opened his eyes. His voice was steady. "You were told to filter."
"We did," the woman replied. "But the request was not direct. It was... automatic."
Automatic.
The word that carries no blame.
Marikka felt the weight on her shoulders react like a compressed spring. The frame wasn't failing because of an attack. It was showing its limit.
She wrote:
TIME.
The woman shook her head. "Little."
Cedric looked at Marikka with something he had never shown her before: not fear, not anger. Responsibility.
"They are coming for me," he said. "Not you."
Marikka felt Serian vibrate hard, painfully. The anchored echo reacted to that deviation like a structural error. It had not been anticipated.
Aurelian took a step forward. "Then the choice is simple."
Marikka looked at him.
"If the contact person is exposed," he continued, "the frame holds. If we remove him—"
"—it collapses," Cedric completed.
Silence.
Not the silence of the house. The one that arrives when systems await a decision.
Marikka closed her eyes for an instant.
She felt the name—not hers—pulling from a wrong direction. She felt the city preparing to validate. She felt the frame stiffen to protect itself, not them.
She opened her eyes.
She wrote a single word.
NO.
Cedric blinked. "No what?"
Marikka looked up. For the first time since they had left the Athenaeum, she was not reading a system. She was choosing against it.
She wrote, slow, firm:
NOT HIM.
The floor responded with a violent vibration. The neutral house momentarily lost its perfect modulation. An object fell from a shelf and shattered.
The fracture had opened.
Not because someone had attacked them.
But because Marikka had said no to a logical solution.
The woman stepped back. "This—" she began.
Marikka didn't let her finish. She rested her hand on the table. Not to read. To declare.
Serian screamed without sound.
The frame trembled.
Outside, Arcanum reacted.
Not with violence.
With attention.
And when systems start paying attention at the same time, it is never by chance.