The balance was measured in percentages.
7.4%. That was the current deviation index. At 10%, hard corrections activated. At 15%, character death events. The gap between where I stood and where the people I cared about started dying was 7.6 percentage points — a margin that sounded comfortable until you calculated the rate of increase.
Each concert session produced approximately 0.3% deviation. We needed twelve to fifteen more sessions. That meant 3.6 to 4.5% of additional deviation just from the ritual — pushing the total to 11-12% before the containment was fully reinforced.
Past the hard correction threshold. Into the zone where the Script started killing people.
Unless I found a way to reduce deviation elsewhere. To give the Script something it wanted — a return to canonical behavior in one area — while continuing to deviate in the area that mattered.
The tightrope.
I spent the morning calculating which deviations were essential and which could be sacrificed.
