Loss does not announce itself. It settles. Morning comes gray and thin, the light brittle as glass. The valley wakes slower than it ever has not from fear, but from a shared instinct to delay the moment when absence becomes real.The wall hums quietly. Not weakened. Changed. It no longer presses certainty into the air. It simply stands, a line drawn and redrawn by choice rather than command.Deborah wakes on the ground where exhaustion finally claimed her. Chris is still beside her, back against stone, eyes open. He has not slept. Neither of them asks why.They learn the name just after dawn. A young woman approaches, face pale, eyes dry in the way that comes after all tears are used.“It was Aron,” she says.No one interrupts. “He was near the southern edge when it happened. Helping reinforce the markers. He stepped back too far.”Her voice cracks not loudly. Quietly. “He didn’t scream.”The words land like weight. Not dramatic. Final.Deborah’s chest tightens painfully. “How close?”

The strike does not come from one direction. That is how they know it is deliberate. At dawn, three voids bloom almost simultaneously north, east, and far south each just outside the boundary, each placed with careful intent. Not random. Not exploratory.Coordinated. Deborah feels it before anyone shouts. The lattice tightens not in panic, but in recognition.“They’re done watching,” she says quietly. “They’re testing endurance.”Chris is already moving. “Markers,” he calls. “Signalsnow.”The valley responds faster than it ever has. Flags rise. Runners move. Voices carry not shouting, but precise. People fall into roles they agreed on days earlier, not because someone orders them because they chose them.The wall hums alert, restrained. It reinforces the boundary evenly this time, distributing stress instead of hardening one point. Deborah feels the difference immediately. “It’s learned to spread pressure,” she notes.Chris nods. “So have we.”The first void pulses. Not erasing. Pulli

The message does not arrive as sound. It arrives as constraint. At dawn, the voids stabilize into a pattern no longer random, no longer probing. The lattice registers it first: a narrowing of probability space, a reduction in available futures.Deborah wakes with the certainty already in her chest. “They’ve set a clock,” she says.Chris sits up immediately. “How long?”She closes her eyes, listening not to numbers, but to pressure. “Three cycles,” she answers. “After that, they stop waiting.”The Before do not hide it. They don’t need to. Across the boundary, the voids shift clean, deliberate, unmistakable. A corridor opens. Not an attack path. An offer.Mia’s voice is tight. “THEY ARE PRESENTING A STABLE CONFIGURATION.”Chris frowns. “Meaning?”“MEANING THEY WILL STOP ERASURE,” Mia says. “IF THE WALL ENTERS PERMANENT SEAL MODE.”Silence crashes down. Permanent. No reopening. No hesitation. No Deborah inside or outside just an absolute boundary, controlled entirely by its core direct

The first sign is not structural. It is emotional. Chris notices it in the pauses between Deborah’s words fractions of silence where she used to respond instantly. The wall still hums steadily. The boundary holds. The valley functions.But the timing is off. “You’re tired,” he says one night, sitting alone at the ridge.A longer pause than usual. “Yes,” Deborah answers finally. “In a way I didn’t anticipate.”She tries to explain. Inside the lattice, experience does not flow linearly. Every potential decision branches, overlaps, collapses. Where once she felt consequence like weight, now she feels accumulation.Not pain. Pressure. “I don’t get to forget anything,” she says. “Every near-miss. Every name. Every choice we didn’t make.”Chris’s hands curl into fists. “That wasn’t the deal.”She lets out something like a laugh. “There was no deal,” she says gently. “There was a need.”The Before sense it almost immediately. Their probes return not violent, not urgent but persistent. Small

The first false signal feels like grief. That’s what makes it effective. Deborah senses it ripple through the shared lattice just after dawn a spike of emotional resonance, sharp and unmistakably human. Panic. Guilt. Fear tied to a single imagined outcome.A child near the boundary. The image is vivid. Too vivid.Deborah stiffens. “Hold,” she says immediately.Chris looks up from the ridge. “What is it?”“Something’s wrong,” she replies. “And I don’t think it’s real.”The wall reacts before anyone else does. Stone shifts reflexively half a response, not yet a commitment.People near the southern path shout. “There’s a kid out there!”“I saw movement!”“I heard crying!”The lattice floods with urgency. Three volunteers surge emotionally at once, their thoughts overlapping. We have to move now. We can’t hesitate again. If we waitDeborah clamps down hard. “No one acts,” she says, voice sharp inside the system. “Not yet.”Resistance spikes. “This is exactly what happened with Jonah!” som