The catastrophe didn't announce itself.
It gathered.
Reports layered over one another—zones of instability, mana saturation climbing globally, resistance concentrating instead of dispersing.
The world was no longer redistributing efficiently.
It was running out of elsewhere.
Captain Greve summoned me privately.
"You've been everywhere the worst of it is," he said. "And somehow, nowhere else collapses."
"Yes."
"That means when it finally does—"
"It will be here," I finished.
He didn't flinch. "You understand what that means."
"Yes."
He exhaled slowly. "Then this isn't command anymore. It's consent."
I gave it.
That night, alone, I opened the system one final time.
Not to optimize.
To understand the total.
For the first time since my rebirth, the number scared me.
Not because it meant death.
But because it meant everything I had avoided feeling was waiting.