They began shortly after the school's establishment had stabilized. They were little things at first, coiling around the village like the mist over the river at dawn. A flick of an eyebrow as Reuben passed by. A whisper that evaporated when he stepped into the market. The lively, unified community that had greeted the opening of the school now showed hairline cracks.
The System, so attuned to danger at the population level, had marked the shift as neither an outbreak vector nor a new, overt measure: [SOCIAL COHESION: -8%]. There was no plague to avert, only a gradual, insidious sickness of the soul.
The catalyst was Elder Jabari. A man whose power, once derived from tradition and respect, had been eroded by Reuben's hard-miracles of concrete. Where Jabari offered rain prayers, Reuben's S
