Chris does not wake all at once. There is no gasp. No sudden breath like drowning broken. Instead the world adjusts around him. The hum beneath the valley lowers in pitch, deepening into something slower, steadier. Not louder. More certain.Deborah feels it through her bones before she sees anything change. His hand tightens around hers. Not a twitch. A grip.She sobs openly now, pressing her forehead against his knuckles, afraid to look at his face in case it shatters the moment.“Chris,” she whispers. “I’m here.”His breathing changes deepens, syncs with the ground beneath them.Mia stands frozen a few steps away, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. “THIS IS NOT NORMAL,” she breathes.Fenn says nothing. He has gone very still. Because he recognizes the pattern. When Chris’s eyes open, the wall responds. Not by sealing. Not by warning. By quieting.Across the valley, people feel it a sudden absence of tension, like a hand unclenching around their lungs. Arguments stop mid-sentence. Movem

The valley does not argue out loud. That is how Deborah knows something has broken. People move differently now not urgently, not cautiously selectively.Groups form without announcement. Conversations lower when she passes. Eyes flick toward Chris, then away, as if contact itself might carry consequence. The wall holds steady. Too steady. Like a blade resting on glass.Deborah wakes alone. The space beside her is empty, still warm. She finds Chris at the ridge again, standing with his back to the valley, hands loose at his sides.The ground around him is smooth now not altered, not reshaped aligned. “You shouldn’t isolate yourself,” she says quietly.He turns. “I’m not,” he replies. “I’m listening.”She steps closer. “To who?”He hesitates. “That’s the problem.”Mia waits for Deborah by the old markers the stones that predate the wall. Her posture is rigid, eyes sharp. “YOU SHOULD STEP BACK,” Mia says without preamble.Deborah stiffens. “From what?”“FROM HIM.”Deborah’s chest tighte

Deborah does not disappear. That is the first relief. She is still herself still aware of breath, of balance, of the steady ache in her knees where stone meets skin. But everything else is louder. Not sound. Meaning.She feels the valley not as a place, but as a field of tension thousands of micro-decisions humming at the edge of becoming action. Fear tightening here. Curiosity loosening there. Intent rippling outward before bodies ever move.The wall is not watching. It is remembering. And now so is she. Outside, Chris staggers once more not from pain, but from recalibration.The constant pressure he carried, the invisible load of being sole center, has shifted. Not lifted. Shared. He exhales shakily, bracing a hand against the ridge.Mia grips his arm. “YOU FEEL HER?”He nods. “Yes.”Mia’s voice drops. “GOOD.”He looks at her sharply. “That didn’t sound like reassurance.”“It is not,” she replies.The first cost arrives quietly. A child runs toward the ridge, chasing a tossed stone

Pain arrives differently when it is expected. Not as shock. As invitation. Deborah feels it like a pressure behind her eyes a suggestion forming inside the lattice, careful, curious.We can reproduce this, the presence resonates.She stiffens instantly. “No,” she answers without sound.You proved pain matters, it replies. So we will include it.Chris hears her intake of breath through the system. “What are they doing?” he asks.Mia answers grimly. “THEY ARE NOT AVOIDING COST ANYMORE.”Fenn’s voice is hollow. “They’re trying to simulate suffering.”The wall does not scream. It experiments. A low risk scenario unfolds near the southern markers. A man slips on loose stone nothing dangerous, nothing intentional. Normally, the wall would cushion. This time it delays. Not enough to injure seriously. Enough to sting.The man cries out, more startled than hurt. The wall responds a beat later correcting, stabilizing.Deborah recoils internally. “That was deliberate.”Chris clenches his fists.

Division does not arrive loudly. It seeps By morning, the valley is no longer one conversation it is many, overlapping and incompatible.Groups form without declaration. Some cluster near the ridge, closer to Chris. Others drift toward the markers, away from the wall’s immediate presence. No one calls them factions.They don’t have to. Deborah feels it immediately. The lattice registers variance patterns of alignment shifting, trust vectors thinning.“They’re splitting,” she whispers.Chris exhales slowly. “I know.”The Before do not push the wall again. They do something far more precise.They speak. Not directly. Not as a voice. As suggestion seeded into the spaces where fear already lives. A rumor spreads before noon.Quiet. Persistent. “They say Deborah is controlling the wall.”Another version follows. “They say Chris isn’t the one deciding anymore.”By midday, a third variant circulates. “They say the wall chose her over us.”Deborah feels each one like a bruise forming before i