The responsibility did not settle all at once.
It distributed.
Not evenly—but precisely, threading itself through each of them according to how they already related to the system. No assignment was declared, no roles imposed, and yet the shift was unmistakable.
What they sustained—
began to depend on who they were within it.
Neo felt it first as differentiation.
Not separation.
Clarification.
The synthesis that had once moved fluidly across all trajectories now encountered variation in resistance depending on origin. When he reached toward a direction shaped by Lira's instinct for exploration, it responded differently than when he followed Beatrix's structural precision, or Cassandra's critical tension, or Ast's quiet alignment.
The system was no longer just responding to meaning.
It was responding to them.
"…That's new," he said, more to himself than the others.
Ti registered it immediately.
"User-specific interaction profiles emerging."
Cassandra narrowed her eyes.
