THE NIGHT BEFORE
No one said goodbye.
That was the first rule.
Not because we believed we were invincible.
Not because optimism had become policy.
Because goodbye had weight. Finality. Narrative gravity. The threshold below the erased garden was already built to feed on beginnings and endings. None of us wanted to hand it one more.
So no one said goodbye.
Instead, the entire capital became very busy pretending tomorrow was not going to involve three people willingly entering a machine built to strip identity into usable architecture.
Very healthy.
Very democratic.
Deeply insane.
---
## **THE PREPARATION ROOM**
Ezra had converted the old observatory into a tether chamber.
Wires made of silver-threaded seed fiber hung from the ceiling.
Twelve mature seed shards—carefully shaved, ethically harvested, and argued over in committee for six hours before approval—were mounted in a circular array around the center platform.
At the center sat three harnesses.
