The answer comes quietly.
That is how you know it will not be accepted.
⸻
It begins with a refusal to keep debating.
Not because the questions stop, but because Zane recognizes the trap beneath them. Every discussion circles back to the same center, the same poisoned axis.
What does the child owe the world?
Who decides?
How much is enough?
The questions are elegant. Reasonable. Catastrophic.
Zane stands in the sanctum at dawn, the heir warm and awake against his chest, small fingers gripping his shirt as if anchoring themselves to something solid in a world that has started to feel theoretical.
Jason watches the lattice churn.
“They’re converging again,” he says quietly. “Not on a solution. On a framework.”
Zane nods.
“Frameworks are how systems make violence feel clean.”
⸻
