The process did not attack the root system with force.

It attacked with definition.

White-glass geometry unfolded from both ends of the climate at once—precise, recursive, almost beautiful in its categorical ruthlessness. On the living side it carved itself into the air of the ruined throne room, each plane etched with adaptive clauses that attempted to name the ninth syllable in language the framework could file. On the third-place side the same geometry descended through the new canopy, slicing the red-gold light into neat, examinable segments. The clauses did not try to erase desire. They tried to make it safe: measurable, containable, stripped of the specific, reciprocal danger that made...