"If the ratio is off, they don’t just go hungry, Bastien. They sicken. They wither. The math was the only thing keeping the 11th District breathing while the Spire rotted from the inside out." Lucien’s voice trembled, a rare tremor that betrayed the exhaustion buried deep beneath his bravado.Bastien leaned over the table, his face illuminated by the flickering, dying stub of a candle. "They aren’t numbers, Lucien! They’re people. You’re trying to build a machine out of ingredients when you should be making a meal out of memories. Look at the flour. It’s gray. The yeast is wild, not lab-grown. Just feel it.""Feel it?" Lucien stared at his hands, which were stained with ash and dried blood. "My hands used to be instruments of precision. Now they’re just... meat and bone."Camille stepped into the small circle of light, her expression hardening with a resolve that silenced the room. "Then use the meat and the bone, Lucien. The Syndicate is closing in. Every minute you spend mourning yo

"The room is screaming," Lucien muttered, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the stone counter. "Can’t you hear it? It’s not just the wind through the cracks. It’s the hunger. It’s the sound of three hundred people waiting for a miracle that tastes like ash."Camille crossed the small, cramped kitchen, her boots crunching on debris. She stopped inches from him, invading his personal space until he was forced to look up from his trembling hands. "They aren’t waiting for a miracle, Lucien. They’re waiting for you to stop staring at the wall and pick up a knife. The Syndicate’s scouts are at the perimeter. They’ve cut the water lines. They think if they dehydrate the square, the people will crawl out of their basements and beg for the Syndicate’s rations.""And if I cook?" Lucien countered, his eyes dark, rimmed with the exhaustion of a man who had seen his own mind fracture. "If I serve them this—these bitter roots, this gray, miserable flour—and it doesn’t provide the nutriti

"It was a sedative," Bastien repeated, his voice echoing off the damp, moss-covered bricks of the makeshift kitchen. "And you’re still twitching from the withdrawal, Lucien. Look at your hands. Stop trying to calculate the caloric density of that potato. It doesn’t matter."Lucien looked down at the mud-slicked tuber in his palm. His phantom-System pulsed—a rhythmic, agonizing ache behind his left eye where the neural interface had once lived. "It matters if they don't have the energy to fight back, Bastien. If I serve them a meal that fails to sustain them, I am complicit in their surrender."Camille stepped closer, the sharp scent of ozone and wet rubble clinging to her coat. "You’re overthinking the biology and ignoring the psychology. Hunger isn't just a physical void. It’s a message that says, 'You don't matter.' When you feed them, you aren't just giving them carbohydrates. You are telling them that they exist. That the Syndicate hasn't erased them yet."Lucien dropped the potat

The gas burner hissed—a violent, sputtering sound that chewed through the silence of the cellar. A thin, sickly blue flame licked the bottom of the cast-iron pot, shivering under the drafty pressure of the encroaching night."That pot is going to explode if you keep the valve that high, Bastien," Lucien muttered, his eyes tracking the flicker of the flame with a precision he couldn't seem to unlearn. Bastien didn’t look up. He was hunched over the potatoes, his knuckles white as he scrubbed. "Let it blow. At least the explosion would be real. Better to die in a kitchen that actually feels like a kitchen than to live in a tomb where we’re afraid of the stove."Lucien winced, his hand reflexively twitching toward his left temple. The phantom System interface flickered in his peripheral vision—ghostly red lines of code attempting to project a temperature reading onto the boiling water. Estimated time to boil: 4 minutes, 12 seconds. Error: Nutritional integrity sub-optimal."Shut up," Lu

"Use the salt," Bastien repeated, his voice echoing off the damp cellar walls like a stone dropped into a dry well. "If the System wants us to be at the Spire, let it think we’re cooking for the High Council. We’ll drown those ghosts in the seasoning they crave until they choke on their own vanity."Lucien stared at the small, jagged pile of coarse, grey salt resting on the scarred wooden table. It wasn't the refined, nutrient-dense crystals the System used to demand; it was grit, harvested from the salt-flats outside the district’s perimeter, bitter and imperfect."If I use the full amount, the profile will be 'incorrect,'" Lucien muttered, his hand still twitching toward his temple. "The interface is flashing red. It’s warning me of a 'culinary deviation.' It’s trying to map the chemical reaction, telling me the potatoes will be ruined by the impurities."Camille stepped forward, the floorboards groaning under her boots. She didn't look at the imaginary interface; she looked directl