Two days later, the first real collision happened.
Not in Gray-3.
Not in any of their Towers.
In a city two districts over, where Tower 10 loomed over a cluster of high-rise apartments and cheap clinics.
Kael saw it in the conflict feed first.
A cluster of red-orange events around a single timestamp.
[INCIDENT BUNDLE: T10-F4, T10-F4_HEALING_NODE, CITY_EVAC_NODE.][TAG: HIGH-SEVERITY WORTH_CONFLICT.]
He pinged Mira.
You seeing Tower 10's feed?
Yes, she wrote. Already on a call. Beta flagged it "ideology clash."
Ideology clash.
That sounded bad.
He opened the details.
It was a mess.
A mid-tier party on Tower 10's Floor 4 had triggered a chain event: collapsed platform, cascading mob spawn, a mini-boss waking early. Standard "oh no" scenario.
Baseline expected outcome: wounded but survivable, a couple of critical injuries, maybe one death.
Instead:
The event routing Node had cranked difficulty scaling up mid-run.
Healing nodes had re-prioritized toward that floor, starving a city clinic of backup power.
Evacuation routes in the surrounding blocks had been downgraded in priority.
Shards had screamed.
In different directions.
[FRAGMENT_CLUSTER_A (MERCY-BIASED): TRYING TO LOWER DIFFICULTY, SPREAD RISK, KEEP EVAC ROUTES HIGH.][FRAGMENT_CLUSTER_B (TRIAL-BIASED): BOOSTING PRESSURE, PRIORITIZING "WORTHY" SURVIVORS, PULLING RESOURCES TOWERWARD.]
Their influence graphs looked like two hands on opposite sides of a steering wheel.
And the car was the Tower's event manager.
In the middle of the noise: two Executors.
[EXECUTOR_KAEL_RYU: INDIRECT INFLUENCE ONLY (VIA SHARD NETWORK PATTERN).][EXECUTOR_UNKNOWN_3: DIRECT INTERVENTION – PRESENT.]
"Oh," Kael said.
Haneul's shard pulsed uneasily.
[FRAGMENT: SENSES NETWORK STRAIN.]
Beta pushed a summary to both him and Mira.
[SUMMARY – T10 CONFLICT:]– UNKNOWN_3 PUSHED A "TRIAL" PATTERN: ALLOW HIGH PRESSURE, REDUCE SUPPORT FOR NON-TOWER NODES.– MERCY-BIASED FRAGMENTS (SEVERAL LINKED TO HANEUL_VECTOR) COUNTER-PUSHED.– OUTCOME: COMPROMISE WITH HIGH VARIANCE.
"What does that mean?" Haneul asked, watching through the feed.
Kael scrolled.
It meant chaos.
The party in Tower 10 survived—but barely, crawling out with HP bars in single digits and permanent debuffs.
The city blocks under the Tower had a patchwork of support. Some evac routes remained open. Some clinics got nothing. A few people died who didn't need to.
[DEATHS ABOVE BASELINE: +2.][DEATHS BELOW UNKNOWN_3-PROPOSED PATH: -6.]
Six fewer if Unknown_3 had gotten full control.
Two more than if the mercy-biased pattern had held.
Net: +4 lives saved over Unknown_3's path, -2 from ideal.
Beta's verdict blinked.
[VERDICT: MIXED. BOTH PATTERNS DESTABILIZED THE OTHER.]
Mira's face appeared on their shared call, jaw tight.
"This," she said, "is what I was afraid of."
"Shards pulling in different directions," Kael said.
"And Executors," she added. "Our quiet bug in Thirteen just had his ethics vector collide with Trauma Guy's idea of 'growth' halfway across the region."
Haneul stared at the chart.
"So we're arguing with other people's gods over other people," she said. "Great."
Kael felt… weird.
He hadn't touched Tower 10 directly.
He'd never set foot in its plaza.
But fragments shaped by Haneul's broadcast had pushed there. Beta's metrics had used their past "wins" as a reference. Unknown_3's shard had pushed back.
"Can we talk to him?" Haneul asked suddenly.
"Unknown_3?" Kael said. "No thanks."
"I don't mean 'let's be friends,'" she said. "I mean, right now, we're fighting through logs and processes. Maybe just… talk."
Mira winced.
"Inter-Executor direct contact is…" she began.
"Stupid, risky, obviously going to happen at some point," Haneul cut in. "Might as well not wait until someone gets a Tower dropped on them."
Kael considered.
Unknown_3 had left traces in ADMIN_0's Node.
They'd both touched the same legacy method.
There might be a way to piggyback a message.
Beta pulsed, uncertain.
[INTER-EXECUTOR COMMUNICATION: POSSIBLE.][RISK: HIGH.]
Haneul's shard hummed.
[FRAGMENT ATTITUDE: "BETTER A CONVERSATION THAN A GUESSING GAME."]
Kael sighed.
"Fine," he said. "We write a note. No coordinates. No personal data. Just… principles. And an invitation to argue in words instead of body counts."
Mira pinched the bridge of her nose.
"I hate that this is the best option," she said. "But I'm not sure 'ignore the guy who's half-forking triage nodes' is sustainable."
"Beta?" Kael said. "You'll sandbox?"
[I WILL LOG EVERYTHING.][IF INTERACTION THREATENS WIDER STABILITY, I WILL FLAG IT.]
"Good enough," he said.
He pulled up ADMIN_0's legacy Node.
The interface greeted him with the same half-broken familiarity.
[GUEST: EXECUTOR_KAEL_RYU.]
He looked for Unknown_3's last fingerprint.
[EXECUTOR_UNKNOWN_3 – LAST ACCESS: 12 HOURS AGO.]
He opened a new log.
Not a function.
A comment.
To whoever thinks 'pain = growth' is a good global policy,
We're stepping on each other's toes in worth functions now. You push pressure. We push mercy. People in Tower 10 just paid for our argument.
I get that Towers chew people up. I get that surviving them makes you harder. But there's a difference between necessary risk and recreational cruelty.
If you want to debate where that line is, do it here. In words. Not in healing node routing and evac downgrades.
— K
He hesitated.
Then added:
P.S. If your shard is telling you "those who break weren't worthy," maybe ask who wrote that metric.
He tagged the comment so that any Executor who had touched that legacy method with a "trial/growth" leaning would see it.
[VISIBLE TO: EXECUTORS WITH HARM_FOR_GROWTH_METRIC > 0.3]
Beta logged it.
[INTER-EXECUTOR MESSAGE: CREATED.][DELIVERY: PENDING.]
Kael leaned back.
"Now we wait," he said.
Haneul groaned dramatically.
"I hate waiting," she said. "Can we at least get noodles while you pick fights with other god-wrenches?"
"Hospital food again?" Kael said.
"Bring contraband," she said. "If I'm going to accidentally become a moral patch server, I want decent carbs."
He smiled.
"Deal," he said.
Outside, Towers hummed.
Inside the System, threads tangled: shards chatting, auditors watching, cunning cults adjusting, and now two Executors about to argue ethics in the comment section of a dead admin's sandbox.
The fault lines were no longer theoretical.
They were live.
And somewhere in Tower 18, Unknown_3's shard had just lit up with a new notification.
[NEW COMMENT ON LEGACY_METHOD: EVAL_SHARD_DECISION()]