The retaliation did not come from the deep first.
It came from the city.
Rhen felt it in the way doors closed more softly than before, in the pauses that stretched too long when Nymera entered a room. The ledger glowed clean and precise, but the air around it had grown brittle.
People were afraid—not of the deep, but of judgment.
"They're calling it the Mark," Skelda said grimly, sliding a tablet across the table. "Node-Specific Accountability. They say it turns governance into punishment."
Nymera read the notes without comment. Words like precedent, overreach, inevitability repeated until they blurred together.
"They think we'll start naming people," Rhen said quietly.
Nymera looked up. "We already do. Every law does. We just pretend otherwise."
Skelda sighed. "That argument doesn't comfort anyone who imagines their name on the list."
The pressure mounted quickly.
A coalition of merchants petitioned for a moratorium—no new node naming until a broader consensus formed. A group of engineers demanded clearer thresholds, terrified of miscalculation. Even some stewards who had voted yes now hesitated, uneasy with the permanence of the act.
"They want brakes," Rhen said.
"They want distance," Nymera replied. "So responsibility doesn't feel so close."
The deep sensed it.
Not as opportunity—yet—but as instability.
Your surface coherence degrades, multiple currents conveyed, voices layered with something like concern. Visibility increases fear.
Nymera answered evenly. "Fear is not failure."
It impedes function.
"So did silence," she replied.
The currents did not disagree.
The first formal challenge came at midday.
A steward named Ilen—respected, methodical—stood before the bowl and spoke without anger.
"We ask for limits," he said. "Not on the deep—but on us. Who decides when a node is named? And how do we stop that power from becoming the thing we fought?"
Nymera listened carefully. This was not opposition born of malice.
It was caution born of memory.
Rhen felt the judgment inside him flare—not to choose, but to frame.
"He's right," Rhen said at last. "We didn't build safeguards for ourselves."
Murmurs rippled through the chamber.
Nymera nodded slowly. "Then we do now."
The proposal took shape under strain.
Not a pause.
Not a retreat.
A constraint on naming itself.
Nymera stood, leaning on her cane. "Node accountability will require a supermajority," she said. "Cross-domain verification. And a public review after each action."
Skelda added, "And an expiration review—every constraint re-evaluated after a fixed period."
Rhen finished quietly, "And a named counter-advocate—someone whose role is to argue against naming, every time."
The city stilled.
Ilen bowed his head slightly. "That would help."
It did not satisfy everyone.
But it held.
The deep reacted with something like… unease.
You constrain the constraint, it observed.
"Yes," Nymera replied. "Because power hates mirrors."
A pause.
This slows response.
"Yes," Rhen said. "On purpose."
The currents shifted—testing the new layers, probing for weakness. None appeared immediately.
Node 7-Delta remained diminished, its influence contained. Others adjusted behavior further, retreating from gray space they no longer trusted.
The architecture grew heavier.
But steadier.
That night, Nymera stood alone on the bridge, exhaustion pressing deep into her bones. Rhen joined her, offering silence before words.
"Do you regret it?" he asked softly.
She considered. "I regret how much it costs to see clearly."
He nodded. "Me too."
She looked out at the water. "People think naming is cruelty."
"And hiding is kindness," Rhen replied. "Until it isn't."
She smiled faintly. "You're getting good at this."
"I'm terrible at it," he said. "I just stay."
She laughed quietly, then winced as pain flared through her side. Rhen steadied her without comment.
Below them, the basin flowed—constrained, visible, learning.
Far beneath the fjords, the deep adjusted once more, now facing a truth it could no longer evade:
Power could be bound.
Behavior could be seen.
And even the act of judgment was no longer free from judgment itself.
The conflict had shifted again—not toward victory, not toward peace—
but toward something harder:
A world where every choice left a record.