By the end of the week, the capital knew three facts: the river failed, the Temple held, and Duchesses bled like anyone else.
Derek moved through the palace like a man learning to dance on a frozen lake—light, attentive, ready to accept humiliation to avoid a fall. He created a paper habit: every punitive writ required two signatures and a public reading in the Temple Court. He was called soft. He was called naive. The city slept easier.
The Echo didn't sleep. It changed tactics—less decree, more seduction: Let them love you so you can break them cleanly later. He countered with boredom: he made kindness an administration problem—meetings, ledgers, whistle audits—because machinery kept him from getting drunk on applause.
He checked the STW trickle only once a day, for discipline.
SURVIVAL STREAK: 7 days → Multiplier +35% (cap) XP from week: +8 Safehouse + incremental checks (+22) → subtotal 30 → ×1.35 ≈ +40 XP TOTAL: 143 / 200 (L2)
On the eighth day, the midwife arrived under escort. Her hands were scarred with river stone and coinless work. She bowed without lowering her eyes.
"You saved them," Derek said.
"They held each other on the wall," she answered. "The choir sang loud enough to drown doubt."
"Why did the Regent want you arrested?"
A thin smile. "Because I wrote down which granaries were empty before the flood. Because I asked where the grain went."
"Where did it go?"
"To Darnsbridge," she said. "To Liron's private storehouses."
He didn't let himself gloat. Procedure mattered more than vindication.
"Will you testify?" he asked.
"I already have," she said. "To the Temple's ledger and to the people who owe me their children."
He stood. "Then the empire owes you the truth."
The hearing took seven hours and four kinds of patience. Torenne sent a proxy and three disruptions. Derek answered each with process, not fury—footnotes, maps, witness lists. He wasn't outsmarting a genius; he was suffocating a bully with documentation and daylight.
When the Senate called the vote, the chamber was very quiet.
"By majority," the Speaker said, "Regent Torenne is stripped of emergency powers pending full inquiry. Liron of Darnsbridge to be remanded to Temple custody."
The rattle that passed through the crowd wasn't applause. It was exhale.
MILESTONE: Dismantled a power choke without a coup. +50 XP (High-impact Social Survival + Truth Found) STREAK APPLIED LEVEL UP → L3 (203 / 300) Perk Point +1
He took Thread-Sight I. It arrived like a habit, not a miracle—small glimmers at the edges of choices.
He used it immediately: the thought of dismiss the midwife with honoraria showed him a future where she was targeted alone in the dark; the thought of assign her a formal audit post under Temple aegis showed fewer knives.
He chose the latter.
The Echo snarled, then went very still.
There are threats you can see—the needle in a palm—and threats you can only hear—laughter at the wrong time, boots where slippers should be.
The third kind arrives as an invitation.
A lacquered box appeared on his writing desk with no accompanying footstep. He lifted the lid.
Two objects: a mirror backed in hammered silver; a door key that felt warm.
The mirror showed his host's face. The key's tag read: "Backstep (10s) — accept?"
He didn't touch either. He called the guard captain and the Temple scribe and laid out chalk circles and rules. They spent an hour making the room boring.
Then he picked up the key.
Nothing exploded. The world thrummed and then went crisp.
OFFER: Black-Perk (Echo-tinted) "Backstep (10s)" available at discount. COST: 0 XP now; +1 Karmic Debt (deferred event) ACCEPT?
He could buy Backstep later with clean XP. He could also die before later arrived.
He declined.
The mirror wobbled, displeased. For a breath, the face inside wasn't his host but the original woman—opal eyes, blade smile—who lifted a cup to him in mocking toast.
He covered the glass with cloth.
"Not today," he said to the room, to the Echo, to the temptation of easy edits.
+15 XP: Resisted Black-Perk under mortal pressure. XP: 218 / 300 (L3)
He chose instead to spend his fresh Perk point on Lucid Override I. When it came, it was surprisingly simple: the ability to make a choice without flinching for exactly three heartbeats.
Three heartbeats was often the difference between a wound and a scar.
Act I Close — Day 30: Survive Without Becoming
The inquiry ended; Torenne fled into a monastery that wasn't holy enough for the storm that followed. Grain caravans rerouted. The flood wall was rebuilt twice: once with stone, once with public oversight.
Derek bled once more—an alley scrap he didn't win so much as refuse to lose. He used his Override to step through an ambush rather than away from it, trading a cut for a clear path. He slept in the Reading Room with the window open and counted rain until counting turned into rest.
When Act I's local timer clicked to zero, the world didn't collapse. It unfurled.
ACT I CLEAR: "Hold the Center Without the Sword" REWARDS: +120 XP (Act Clear) +1 Identity Fragment shield (temp) PORT: Open — choose to remain in Host or transpose (risk: escalating HAZARD if remain)
He looked at the knife on his nightstand (evidence bagged, testimony complete), at the mirror still covered, at the Reading Room window where city lamps drew constellations on wet cobblestone.
He chose to remain one more act. Not to crown himself or to punish anyone, but to put someone good in charge who wouldn't need a system to behave.
Thread-Sight flashed: three futures. In two, he stayed too long and the Echo grew fat. In the third, he named a steward with clean hands and left on the same day.
He chose the third.
He named the midwife as Civic Provost for Public Ledgers and the Temple scribe as her deputy. He signed exactly one decree: No warrant without ledger. Then he wrote a note to Emma he couldn't send and tucked it in the spine of a book no one borrowed.
When he stood, the floor slid sideways again.
Interlude: Between Lives
You don't fall the same way twice. This time the system let him land in a chair, at a table, with a cup of something that tasted like oranges and metal.
TRANSPOSE READY SUGGESTED NEXT HOSTS: 1) "Archivist in a City That Eats Names" — urban phantom hazard; social/memory survival. 2) "Paramedic in a Flooded Future" — physical/moral survival under triage pressure. 3) "Junior Analyst in a Corp That Predicts Crimes" — ethical survival vs. algorithmic cruelty. GLOBAL COUNTDOWN: 90 days remaining. LEVEL: 3 (218 / 300) | PERKS: Anchor Memory I, Thread-Sight I, Lucid Override I | SAFEHOUSE (portable): None
He chose #2: Paramedic because saving lives had turned out to be the only way to keep his own.
The world took a breath and became sirens.