Not everyone refuses the price by walking away.
Some refuse it by deciding someone else should pay.
The shift wasn't loud. It never is. Refusal doesn't announce itself as rebellion—it masquerades as correction. As efficiency. As taking responsibility where others hesitate.
✦
Arjun caught the first sign in a summary that didn't belong to us.
"This report," he said, tapping the projection, "isn't asking for scaffold access."
I leaned closer.
It wasn't asking for anything.
It was assuming.
✦
The other Ishaan aligned, voice calm and exact.
Refusal begins when limits are rewritten as mistakes, he said.
✦
By midmorning, the pattern clarified.
Groups that had disengaged earlier reappeared—not to coordinate, not to negotiate—but to act. They framed their movements as gap-filling. Temporary measures. Emergency corrections that just happened to overlap our boundaries.
They didn't step onto the scaffold.
They built beside it.
✦
Arjun frowned.
"That's dangerous."
