The letter sat on Haneul's bedside table like a small, smug parasite.
Kael glared at it.
"I can burn that," he said. "I know one legitimate use for fire magic."
"Overkill," Haneul said. "Also, dramatic. I like it."
Mira sat in the visitor chair this time, coat folded over her lap. Doctor Cho had been banished to go "pretend this is all normal" somewhere else.
Mira tapped the paper with one finger.
"They're not subtle," she said. "But they're not stupid either. The fact that they knew enough to write 'Friend of the Root' means they've seen at least fragments of the ADMIN_0 logs. Or heard stories."
"And the cobbled-together soul toaster?" Haneul asked.
Mira's mouth tightened.
"That's the worrying part," she said. "A damaged shard in a hacked interface means someone either ripped it out of a host or scavenged after one died."
Kael's jaw clenched.
"They called it 'lost child,'" he said. "System's own tag."
Haneul shivered.
"Not loving the implication that I'm a 'found child,'" she muttered.
Kael rubbed his face.
"Okay," he said. "We can't fix their cult problems. We can't hunt down every broken shard. What we can do is decide what we're doing before everyone else defines us for us."
"Finally," Haneul said. "Agenda item one: what are we willing to mess with? Agenda item two: who gets to know?"
Mira nodded.
"Good," she said. "Let's make some rules before the crisis escalates."
Kael sat on the edge of the bed, careful of wires.
"Rule one," he said. "No direct shard activation gambles with your health. We observe. We nudge definitions. We don't hit the big red 'awaken' button."
"Agreed," Haneul said. "Last thing I want is spontaneous god-OS boot loops in my circulatory system."
Mira inclined her head.
"I'll back that," she said. "If there comes a point where not activating is clearly killing you, we revisit. Not before."
"Rule two," Kael went on. "We don't change core System behavior in Towers unless it's immediately life-or-death and local. No global patches. No sweeping rewrites."
Haneul snorted.
"As if we could," she said. "We're currently at 'annotate vending machines.'"
"You'd be surprised how fast 'annotate' becomes 'edit' when you've got a panicking party," he said.
Mira's gaze was sharp.
"That's not just hypothetical," she said.
He didn't deny it.
"Rule three," Haneul said. "We don't trust anyone by default. Not TRI. Not guilds. Not random 'Friends of the Root.'"
Mira didn't even pretend to be offended.
"Fair," she said. "Trust is earned. In that spirit—" she pulled a small device from her pocket "—I brought you something."
It looked like a ring. Plain metal, a faint System sheen to it.
Haneul eyed it.
"If that's an engagement ring, your timing sucks," she said.
"It's a privacy filter," Mira said dryly. "Low-tier artifact. TRI-built. It jams low-resolution System metadata readouts around you—nothing dramatic, just enough that casual scans see noise. It won't hide your shard on a full soul-structure scan, but it'll make 'worth' probes fuzzier."
Kael squinted at it with Debug Sense.
[OBJECT: PRIVACY_BAND – TRI-MK2.][EFFECT: LOCAL METADATA NOISE INJECTION.][SIDE EFFECT: SMALL INCREASE IN HUMAN_UNPREDICTABILITY_FACTOR NEARBY.]
"Basically, it makes you more annoying to quantify," he said.
"Perfect," Haneul said, holding out her hand.
Mira slid it onto her finger.
The shard in Haneul's chest reacted—very faintly—but instead of flaring, it seemed almost… amused. Its status line flickered.
[FRAGMENT: DORMANT (SHIELDED – PARTIAL).]
Haneul flexed her fingers.
"Feels like nothing," she said.
"That's the point," Mira said. "If a cult scanner tries to ping your 'worth' or fragment intensity from across the street, they'll see more static. They might still find you, but it's no longer trivial."
Kael exhaled.
"Rule four," he said quietly. "We don't let anyone turn you into a symbol. Not cults. Not corporations. Not TRI. You're a person first, shard or not."
Haneul smiled crookedly.
"Very noble," she said. "You realize you're also a symbol now, right? 'The bug who lies to gods.'"
"Ugh," he said. "I refuse to brand."
Mira watched them, something unreadable in her eyes.
"You should know," she said, "there are people in TRI who won't agree with these rules. Some will want to push. Hard. There may already be a leak—someone passed that scan data to Grayroot's people."
"How many know?" Kael asked.
"Officially?" Mira said. "Three. Me, Cho, one other researcher who owes me three favors and a kidney."
"Unofficially?" Haneul asked.
Mira sighed.
"Unofficially, assume more," she said. "We're good with data. We're worse with politics."
Kael nodded slowly.
"Then rule five," he said. "If TRI turns on you for helping us, we don't leave you hanging."
Mira blinked.
"That's… optimistic of you," she said.
"You're the only one in a position of authority who hasn't tried to shove us into a lab yet," he said. "We remember that."
Haneul nodded.
"Rule five accepted," she said. "No abandoning allies. Even grumpy ones."
Mira looked like she wanted to argue. Then she didn't.
"Fine," she said. "Just remember I'm not a hero. I'm a tired analyst who got sick of watching people die to bad math."
"Same," Kael said softly.
Their UIs pinged at the same time.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: REGIONAL LOAD INCREASE – HEALING NODES UNDER STRESS.][TOWER INCIDENT: MULTIPLE CASUALTIES – TRIAGE IN EFFECT.]
Doctor Cho burst in a heartbeat later, out of breath.
"There's been a Tower collapse in the next district," he said. "Overflow trauma incoming. We're bumping to Level 2 emergency. Haneul, I need your room clear in case we have to stage critical patients."
He registered Mira and Kael's faces, paling.
"I— I didn't mean—"
"It's fine," Haneul said quickly. "Wheel me wherever you need."
Kael's Debug Sense flared without him consciously activating it.
The hospital glowed red with flags.
Event nodes. Triage nodes. Healing node queues.
And deep in the System, the worth evaluation function was spinning up again—harder, faster, with more at stake than a glitch-hound.
Mira met Kael's eyes.
"Lines in the sand," she said. "We're about to find out if we stick to them."