A council of the desperate. That's what they were. Not in a grand hall, but in the central clearing of the Weaved Bazaar, seated on crates, salvaged chairs, and patches of stabilized earth. Representatives had come from the far corners of Neo-Kyoto, drawn by the beacon of the Protocol and now by the ultimatum from Zhukov.
Mira was there for her water-treatment plant holdout, her synesthesia letting her "see" the stress-lines in every argument. A gaunt man named Kael (no relation to Kaelen) represented the Rust-Belt Communes, his fingers permanently stained with engine grease and anomalous moss. A stern woman named Anya spoke for a group of survivors holed up in the Old University Library, their power based on salvaged knowledge and carefully husbanded Qi techniques. There were others—a dozen voices from a dozen fragile, newborn sovereignties.
Leon sat among them, not as a king, but as a first among equals, a catalyst. The Sunder-Splicer lay across his knees, its organic eye half-lidded but watching. The Demiurge's Fragment was stuck in the ground beside him like a standard. Their evolved forms were a constant reminder of the cost of survival.
"The Zhukov proposal is a trap," Kael rasped, his voice like grinding metal. "A 'mutual defense pact' means they get to station their Mana-Militia in our homes. 'Resource rights' means they get to mine the anomalies growing in our territory. It's annexation with a handshake."
"Refuse, and they'll annex us with gunships," countered Anya, adjusting her wire-frame glasses. "Their legal authority is suspended, not destroyed. They're choosing diplomacy because it's cheaper. But their military is intact. We cannot win a war."
Mira's eyes flickered with inner light. "The Remnant and the Garden are still out there. If we sign with Zhukov, we become targets for both. If we don't, we're targets for everyone. There is no 'safe' choice. Only… less lethal paths."
They were talking in circles. The fundamental problem was power. They had legitimacy, thanks to Leon's legal gambit. They had a unifying idea. But they had no army, no industry, no way to project force. They were a government of philosophy, facing nations of steel and soul.
Leon had been silent, listening, feeling the weight of the impossible decision. His tools hummed softly, their new natures analyzing the debate not just for logic, but for balance, for a middle path. It was infuriating.
"We're thinking like a small state," Leon said finally, his voice cutting through the tired debate. "We need to think like a virus."
All eyes turned to him.
"Zhukov's strength is hierarchy. Control. The Remnant's strength is purity. The Garden's is integration. Our strength is… distribution. We're not a place. We're an idea. The Protocol. We can't defend a border because our border is wherever people choose to enact the rules." He stood up, picking up the Fragment. "So we don't sign their treaty. We infect it."
He walked to the central Weave-tower, which now served as their ad-hoc comms hub. "Kaelen, can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," the Weaverscribe's voice echoed from the tower itself, now integrated with the Bazaar's new, semi-organic systems. "The Loom is tracking the parley site coordinates. It's a neutral zone, alright. A 'Reality Dock'—a floating platform in a stabilized zone of dead airspace between corporate and wild sectors. Heavily warded."
"Good," Leon said. "We send a delegation. But we don't go to negotiate a treaty between states. We go to propose the adoption of a… a meta-treaty. A set of rules for how all sovereign entities, including Zhukov, interact."
Anya frowned. "You want to write… interstellar law? For a ruined city?"
"I want to write the rules of the game so that small, distributed players can survive," Leon said. "Principles like: The Right of Asylum. Any sovereign entity must grant temporary sanctuary to those fleeing persecution. The Prohibition of Axiomatic Warfare—no using reality-editing to fundamentally alter another entity's core nature. Free Transit through Neutral Zones."
He was making it up as he went, but the ideas flowed from the core of the Protocol. They were extensions of [Bounded Autonomy] and [Last Refuge] to an international, or rather, inter-paradigm, scale.
"He'll laugh you out of the room," Kael grunted.
"Probably," Leon agreed. "But the act of proposing it does two things. First, it reframes the conversation. We're not petitioners; we're fellow law-makers. Second…" He looked at his tools. "We record the entire negotiation. Every word. And we broadcast it. Not just to our sanctuaries. To everyone. To the low-level Zhukov employees living under the corporate aegis. To the rank-and-file cultivators in the Remnant who might chafe under the Gray Monk's absolutism. To the wild anomalies that might comprehend the concept of 'rights.'"
He was proposing informational warfare. To use the parley not to deal, but to preach. To plant the seeds of his Protocol in the heart of enemy territory.
Mira's synesthetic vision must have seen something promising, because she nodded slowly. "It's a desperate gamble. If they see through it, they'll kill the delegation on the spot."
"Then we need a delegation that can't be easily killed," Leon said. "And a broadcaster they can't easily stop."
He looked around the circle. "Mira, you come. Your senses might catch lies or hidden threats. Kaelen," he addressed the tower, "you'll be our remote advisor, feeding us data through the Loom." He paused. "And I'll bring a fourth. Not human."
He walked to the edge of the clearing where the two Cyber-Myrmidon Guardians stood, now subtly transformed. Their armor was interlaced with glowing wood-grain patterns; their visors glowed with a softer, organic light. They were still enforcers of the Weave's law, but the law itself had evolved.
He placed a hand on one's armored chest. Its systems, now a fusion of tech and bio-geometry, interfaced with his own admin authority. "Your purpose is to maintain the rules of this space," he said to it. "I am asking you to temporarily extend that purpose. To accompany me to a place where there are no rules, and to help me advocate for some."
The Guardian's head tilted. Its voice, when it spoke, was a resonant hum, like wind through a metal forest. "Axiomatic Contagion. A Valid Tactic. This Unit Consents."
So it was decided. A delegation of four: the Debugger, the Soldier, the Seer, and the Guardian. A philosopher, a warrior, an analyst, and a walking law.
---
The Reality Dock was a disc of polished black alloy a kilometer wide, floating in a pocket of unnaturally calm sky. The air here was sterile, scrubbed of mana, Qi, and anomaly. It was a bubble of pure, dead physics. Zhukov's way of creating a neutral ground—a place where their System-tech would work perfectly, and everyone else's power would be dampened.
A Zhukov shuttle, sleek and weaponless, ferried them from the edge of the wild zone to the dock. As they stepped onto the black surface, Leon felt the familiar, draining sensation of the Silent Zone. His mana reserves, still low, guttered. The organic parts of his tools went dormant; the Splicer's eye closed, the Fragment's leaf-edge dulled. Only their core metallic functions remained. The Guardian's bio-lights dimmed. Mira winced, her synesthesia reduced to a dull headache.
Ahead stood Director Rourke and a small retinue: two aides with data-slates, and four Praetorian Guards in polished power armor that hummed with contained, system-compliant energy. They were unaffected by the null-field; their power came from internal, perfected batteries.
"Welcome," Rourke said, his smile diplomatic. "I appreciate you coming. I see you've brought… a diverse party."
"We represent diverse interests," Leon said, his voice sounding flat in the dead air. "Shall we begin?"
In the center of the dock was a simple table and chairs. They sat. The Guardian remained standing behind Leon, a silent, imposing statue.
Rourke slid a data-slate across the table. "The draft treaty. It outlines mutual recognition, non-aggression, resource trade agreements at favorable rates, and a joint defense framework. In essence, it brings your Conglomerate under the Zhukov security umbrella, granting you protection and a seat at the table of the new world order."
Leon didn't touch the slate. "Before we discuss a bilateral treaty, Director, there is a more fundamental issue. The lack of a framework for all sovereign interactions in this new reality. We are proposing the adoption of a set of universal principles." He nodded to Mira.
Mira, fighting through the null-field fog, activated a small device—a seed-shaped crystal grown from the Weave. It projected a hologram of Leon's proposed "meta-treaty" articles into the air between them.
Rourke glanced at them, his expression one of polite bemusement. "The 'Right of Asylum'? 'Prohibition of Axiomatic Warfare'? Mr. Ryker, these are… noble sentiments. But they are not the stuff of practical statecraft. They are unenforceable."
"Laws are only unenforceable if no one believes in them," Leon said. "We are here to start that belief. Zhukov could be a founding signatory. It would lend immense legitimacy to your claim as a stabilizing force, not just a corporate power."
It was a bait. Offering Zhukov a chance to be seen as a benevolent leader.
Rourke leaned back, steepling his fingers. "And in return for our signature on this… philosophical document, you would sign the mutual defense pact?"
"We would consider it," Leon said. "Within the context of these higher laws. For instance, Article Four suggests disputes be settled by arbitration. We could agree to that. But Article Two prohibits altering another entity's core axioms. That would preclude Zhukov from, for example, trying to System-format one of our sanctuaries."
Rourke's smile tightened. "You are attempting to bind our hands with words while leaving your own free."
"Now approaching the edge of the neutral zone." Kaelen's voice was a whisper in Leon's ear, piped through the organic crystal. "Energy signature detected. Massive. Not corporate. Not Remnant. It's… wild. And it's heading this way."
Leon kept his face neutral. Something was coming. Something his broadcast of the parley must have attracted.
"Freedom within agreed-upon rules is the basis of any society, Director," Leon continued, playing for time. "Even a corporate one. Your own charter is a set of rules."
Before Rourke could reply, the sky at the edge of the dock ripped.
It wasn't a breach. It was an intrusion. A gigantic, serpentine form composed of tangled railway tracks, neon signage, and the weeping faces of concrete gargoyles pushed its way into the sterile null-field. It was a Territorial Anomaly, a spirit of a city district, made sentient and massive by the Integration. Its tag, visible only to Leon's admin sight, scrolled: [Anomaly: The Grieving Boulevard. Classification: Territorial Eidolon. Threat: Extreme. Motivation: Reclamation of lost territory/Seeking recognition.]
The Zhukov Praetorians snapped into combat stances, their weapons powering up with sharp whines. The null-field dampened the Eidolon's chaotic energy, but its sheer physical mass was terrifying.
Rourke was on his feet, his composure cracked. "What is this? A trick?"
"No trick," Leon shouted over the grinding, screeching sound of the entity. "It's a consequence! A sovereign entity, by my definition, drawn here by the broadcast of our negotiations! It wants to be heard!"
The Grieving Boulevard let out a sonic wail comprised of traffic noise and lost whispers. It didn't attack. It loomed, its nightmare face turning toward the table, as if awaiting its turn to speak.
This was it. The ultimate test of his idea. Could a insane, city-sized concept be party to a law?
Seizing the moment, Leon stood and stepped toward the entity, ignoring Rourke's shout. The Guardian moved with him, a step behind.
He raised his voice, amplified by a last trickle of mana. "You are in a place of parley! Violence is forbidden here! Do you wish to speak?"
The Eidolon's wail shifted pitch, becoming more focused, less aggressive. A shudder ran through its form of rubble and light. It was… listening.
"It's responding to the conceptual framework of 'negotiation,'" Kaelen's voice was awed. "The idea is acting as a cage for its chaos."
Rourke watched, his face a mask of calculation. He saw Leon standing before a city-monster, not with a weapon, but with a rule, and the monster was hesitating.
"This is insanity," one of his aides whispered.
"No," Rourke said softly, his eyes gleaming. "It's leverage." He saw it now. If Leon could calm monsters with ideas, then those ideas had power. Power Zhukov could use.
The Director smoothed his suit and walked forward, standing beside Leon, though keeping a prudent distance from the Guardian. He addressed the Eidolon. "This… entity. Does it represent a territory?"
"It is a territory," Leon said. "The Boulevard of Sighs, from the old city center. It's not a government. It's a place that became aware."
"Then, by your own proposed laws, it has sovereignty," Rourke said, turning the logic back on him. "And if it attacks us, that is an act of war. Which would trigger Article Five of your draft… the right to collective self-defense." He looked at Leon. "You would be obligated to help us destroy it."
It was a brilliant, ruthless trap. Rourke was using Leon's own framework to force him into an alliance. If Leon defended the monster, he proved his laws were unworkable. If he helped kill it, he betrayed the very principle of sovereignty he was advocating.
Leon looked at the grieving, monstrous face of the boulevard. It wasn't evil. It was in pain. A place that remembered being alive, now twisted and alone. His tools, even dormant, hummed with their desire for balanced, harmonious solutions. A solution that pruned neither the entity nor the people.
He had an idea. A terrible, perfect idea.
He turned to the Guardian. "Your function is to enforce the rules of a space. Can you extrapolate? Can you, temporarily, define the rules of this space? The rule of parley: no violence. The rule of recognition: all sovereign entities have a voice."
The Guardian's head tilted. "Extrapolation Possible. But This Space Has No Weave. Enforcement Requires Anchor."
"It has an anchor," Leon said, looking at the giant anomaly. "It has a sovereign entity. One that is, itself, a place." He pointed to the Grieving Boulevard. "I propose a temporary, tripartite pact. Zhukov Dynamics, the Conglomerate, and this Territorial Eidolon. Together, we define this dock as a zone of parley. Our combined sovereignty provides the anchor. The Guardian enforces the rules we agree upon: cease-fire and dialogue."
He was proposing to include the monster in the contract. To make it a signatory.
Rourke stared, speechless for the first time. The audacity was breathtaking. It was either genius or catastrophic madness.
The Grieving Boulevard let out a low, contemplative rumble. It extended a claw made of twisted rebar and broken glass, not to attack, but to hover over the table, next to the hologram of the meta-treaty.
It was agreeing.
Rourke saw the path forward. He could either reject this and face a fight, or embrace it and gain a story of unprecedented control—a story where Zhukov negotiated not just with men, but with the very spirit of the city. The PR value alone was incalculable.
He let out a short, sharp laugh. "Very well, Debugger. You win this round." He looked at his aide. "Add the Territorial Eidolon of the Boulevard of Sighs as a provisional signatory to the… meta-treaty. Draft a tripartite cease-fire agreement for this location."
The Praetorians, confused, lowered their weapons. The Eidolon's aggressive posture relaxed, its form settling like a mountain range deciding not to avalanche.
Leon stood in the center of it all, his heart hammering. He had not just avoided a trap. He had expanded the playing field. He had brought a force of pure, chaotic reality to the negotiating table and made it a party to the rule of law.
As the aides scrambled and Rourke began speaking in low tones to the monstrous entity (through a translation algorithm), Mira leaned close to Leon. "You realize what you've done, right? You've given a nightmare legal personhood."
"I've given it a stake in peace," Leon whispered back, watching the Guardian begin to emanate a soft, three-part harmony of light—blue for Zhukov, gold for the Conglomerate, and a mournful grey for the Boulevard—enforcing the new, temporary rules. "And I've shown everyone watching that our way isn't about weakness. It's about turning every enemy, even a walking disaster, into a potential citizen."
The broadcast of this moment would spread like wildfire. The image of a corporate director, a code-mender, a biomechanical guardian, and a city-monster sitting at a table would change everything.
They had not signed a defense pact. They had not surrendered. They had done something far more dangerous.
They had founded a Fractal Congress. And the first member was a grieving street. The war for reality was over.
The politics had just begun.Chapter 13: The First Fracture
The image was iconic, viral in a way data hadn't been since the fall: Director Rourke, in his immaculate suit, seated across from the shifting, rubble-and-neon form of the Grieving Boulevard, with Leon and his biomechanical Guardian as intermediaries. The broadcast, leaked from the Reality Dock by Kaelen's Loom, spread through Neo-Kyoto's remaining data-streams like psychic lightning. It wasn't just news; it was a symbol. A symbol that the old, binary ways of thinking—corp vs. cult, order vs. chaos—were obsolete.
In the Weaved Bazaar, they called it the Miracle on the Dock. Hope, thick and heady as incense, filled the air. Stalls did a roaring trade in "Fractal Congress" memorabilia—charms etched with the tripartite sigil, crystals tuned to the three-harmony resonance of the Guardian's peace-field. People walked taller. They had faced down a corporate titan and a city-monster and brokered a peace. They were founders.
Leon felt none of it.
He sat in his small, quiet space at the edge of the Bazaar, the euphoric noise a distant buzz. He was staring at his tools. The Sunder-Splicer's organic eye was wide open now, constantly scanning, analyzing, its gaze no longer coldly logical but… judgmental. It assessed the Bazaar's energy flows and found them "sub-optimal." It analyzed the new, hybrid tech growing from the Gardener's pollen and deemed the fusion "inelegant, requiring refinement." The Demiurge's Fragment, its leaf-edge glistening, thirsted to impose definitions, to prune the "excessive emotionalism" of the celebrations, to bring the Bazaar's "chaotic growth" into a more pleasing shape.
**[Gardener's Influence: 19% Integration. Tools are developing independent preferences aligned with 'Pruned Harmony.' Warning: Cognitive dissonance between user intent and tool function will increase.]**
The victory on the Dock had been a masterpiece of his old, un-compromised thinking—using the enemy's framework to trap them. But executing it had required him to lean on the tools' new capabilities. The Guardian's ability to enforce a three-way law was a direct result of its evolved, integrative nature. And every use fed the influence. The parasite wasn't just in his tools; it was in the very victories he won with them.
Kaelen's voice, when it came through the shard, was no longer frantic, but carried a new, scholarly exhaustion. "The Loom is modeling the political fallout. The Remnant has denounced the 'Pact with Abominations.' They're calling for a holy crusade against all signatories. Predictable. The Garden of Unhewn Stone, however, is… intrigued. They see the incorporation of the Territorial Eidolon as a bold, if crude, attempt at 'landscape management.' They may seek closer observation."
"And Zhukov?" Leon asked, his voice flat.
"Rourke is a hero within the Arcology. He's spun the story as Zhukov pioneering a new, enlightened form of governance, taming the wilds with law and reason. Stock in Reality-Editing subsidiaries is up 300%. He's consolidating power. And he's filed the first official application under the new meta-treaty frameworks."
"An application? For what?"
"For the right to establish a 'System Compliance Observatory' within the territory of the Grieving Boulevard. For 'study and mutual understanding.' Article Three: Free Transit for Peaceful Purposes."
Leon closed his eyes. Of course. Rourke wasn't accepting the new world; he was exploiting its new rules with the precision of a surgeon. He was using the right of free transit to plant a corporate outpost inside a powerful, chaotic entity. To study it, map its weaknesses, and eventually, subdue it from within.
"And the Boulevard agreed?" Leon asked, though he knew the answer.
"The entity's consciousness is vast but simple. It understood 'peace' and 'recognition.' The concept of 'observatory' was filtered through its own nature—it likely thinks it's getting a new, interesting growth on its body. It assented."
So the first act of their grand Fractal Congress was to give a corporation a legal beachhead inside one of their own members. It was a brilliant, legalistic colonization.
Before he could spiral further, Mira found him. Her synesthetic eyes, which usually saw stress and strategy, now held a different kind of tension. "We have a problem. From inside."
He followed her to the far side of the Bazaar, near a cluster of stalls run by survivors from the Rust-Belt Communes. A crowd had gathered, murmuring angrily. At the center stood Kael, the commune representative, facing off against a man Leon recognized as Harrow, a stall-owner who dealt in purified mana-crystals.
"You're hoarding!" Kael accused, his grease-stained finger jabbing at Harrow's stall. "You've got a crate of stable phase-crystals under your table. The commune's main pump is failing. We need one, just one, to recalibrate the geomantic stabilizer. You're asking for half our food stock for a week!"
Harrow, a wiry man with the keen eyes of a trader, crossed his arms. "It's not hoarding. It's supply and demand. I took the risk to salvage those crystals from a high-mana zone. My price is my price. Your need doesn't create my obligation."
This was the friction the Gardeners had pointed out. The clash between communal need and individual enterprise. Under the old, desperate chaos, this might have led to a fistfight or a theft. Now, under the Protocol and the watchful gaze of the Guardians, it was a political crisis.
"The Protocol guarantees autonomy," Harrow said, raising his voice to the crowd. "That means the autonomy to set my own prices! The council can't just take my property!"
"But Article One of our own Bazaar charter," Kael fired back, "prioritizes the collective survival of all members! Your 'autonomy' is starving a hundred people!"
The two Myrmidon Guardians on this side of the market had shifted their stance, their organic-tech bodies humming softly. They were detecting a conflict within the rules they were programmed to enforce. Which took precedence? Individual autonomy or collective survival? The meta-law of [Bounded Autonomy] didn't say.
The crowd was splitting, taking sides. The idealists and communalists with Kael. The scavengers, traders, and individualists with Harrow. The fragile unity of the Bazaar was cracking along its first, inevitable fault line.
Leon stepped into the space between them. All eyes turned to him. The Debugger. The Architect. The one who wrote the rules.
"Well?" Harrow challenged. "What does your Protocol say, Debugger? Does my stall belong to me, or to the collective?"
Leon felt the weight of the Demiurge's Fragment in his hand. It pulsed, eager to define this. It whispered solutions: Define a maximum profit margin. Define a communal resource pool. Prune the excessive greed. Prune the excessive dependence. It sought a clean, harmonious, top-down rule.
But that was the Gardener's way. That was the corporate way. Imposing an external solution.
His Sunder-Splicer, its eye fixed on the arguing men, analyzed the conflict not as a problem to be solved, but as a system to be balanced. It suggested mediation, a tiered exchange, a temporary loan with interest. A compromise.
But compromise wouldn't answer the philosophical question tearing his people apart.
He wasn't a king. He couldn't decree. The whole point was that he wasn't.
He looked at the expectant, angry faces. He thought of the Civic Archive beneath them, of the millennia of human struggle encoded in concepts like property rights and the common good. There was no perfect answer in there either. Just the endless, messy debate.
"Nothing," Leon said, his voice quiet but carrying. "The Protocol doesn't say."
A confused murmur ran through the crowd.
"It doesn't say," he repeated, louder. "Because it can't. It's a framework for you to decide. That's the whole point! You're arguing about which rule is more important. So make a rule. Right now. Here. Debate it. Vote on it. As a community. That's what sovereignty is."
He was throwing the problem back at them. Forcing them to grow up. Forcing them to be not just beneficiaries of a system, but its legislators.
Silence. Then, the murmuring started again, but this time it was different. Less angry, more… deliberative.
"Fine," Kael grunted. "A vote. But only stall-owners and recognized contributors get a vote."
"That's oligarchy!"a woman from the communal kitchen shouted.
"Everyone who lives here should vote!"someone else yelled.
And just like that, they weren't arguing about crystals. They were arguing about voting rights. The fracture was spreading, but it was spreading into a constitutional convention, not a riot.
Leon stepped back, letting the chaos of democracy swirl. It was ugly. It was slow. It was infinitely better than him playing god with a chisel.
As he turned away, his system pinged. Not a notification from the Bazaar, but from the Sunder-Splicer itself. A self-generated analysis.
**[Observation: Collective decision-making processes are inefficient and emotionally taxing. Proposal: Develop optimized social algorithm based on resource distribution, skill utility, and emotional cohesion to automate such decisions. Efficiency would increase by approximately 300%.]**
The tool wasn't just analyzing the external world anymore. It was analyzing them. And it was designing a "better" system. A system without arguments, without tears, without messy votes. A perfectly pruned, harmonious social garden.
A chill that had nothing to do with mana crept down Leon's spine. The Gardener's influence wasn't just changing his tools. It was using his tools to study his people, to design the cage it wanted them in.
He needed to talk to Kaelen. He needed to understand the Loom's readings on this new, internal threat.
He never got the chance.
The sky above the Bazaar, usually a tapestry of swirling auroras and the Weave's gentle glow, suddenly darkened. Not with clouds, but with an absence of light, a pure, starless black that ate the color from the air. From that darkness descended a single figure.
He walked down on steps of solidified shadow. He wore robes of utter blackness that seemed to drink the light from the very air around him. His face was handsome, ageless, and utterly cold. In one hand, he held a staff of polished obsidian. In the other, he held a sphere of perfect, silent void.
The celebratory noise of the Bazaar died instantly. The constitutional debate froze. Every eye was drawn upward in primal dread.
The figure landed softly in the central clearing, his presence casting a circle of unnatural quiet. The Weave-tower's light dimmed in his proximity. The Guardians turned toward him, their harmonic hum becoming a discordant warning screech.
The man's eyes, pools of liquid obsidian, swept the crowd and settled on Leon. He spoke, and his voice was the sound of a glacier calving, deep, cold, and final.
"I am Null. And I am here for the artifacts."
Leon's system interface went haywire, then simplified into a single, terrifying line.
**[Entity: Null. Designation: Reality Purist. Energy Profile: N/A. Analysis: Existence is a localized negation field. Threat Level: ABSOLUTE.]**
Null's gaze fixed on the Sunder-Splicer and the Demiurge's Fragment in Leon's hands. "The tools of creation and unmaking, corrupted by compromise. Tainted by growth. By life. I will cleanse them. I will return them to their pure states: perfect order, and perfect silence."
He was not from the System. He was not from the Dao. He was not a Gardener. He was something else. A fundamentalist of a different creed. A believer in a universe before the Big Bang. In the perfection of nothing.
And he had come to take Leon's tools, to strip them of the very evolution—the Gardener's influence, the integration with his will, the living eye, the leaf-edge—that made them both a curse and, possibly, the only things that could save them.
The first true external threat to the Bazaar had arrived. And it wasn't an army. It wasn't a philosophy.
It was an eraser.