The pause stretched.
Inside the system, it felt like indecision. Outside, it was something rarer: a moment where consequence had not yet chosen its shape.
Meetings adjourned without resolution. Drafts circulated and stalled. People slept poorly. Not from fear of collapse—that had become familiar—but from the quieter dread of responsibility. To act now meant owning the break. To wait meant pretending the break had not already begun.
Signals crossed.
A budget line went unfunded.
A directive returned unsigned.
A legacy clause quietly expired because no one renewed it in time.
None of it dramatic. None of it framed as sacrifice.
But taken together, it formed a slope.
Asher watched the slope carefully. Not to stop the slide, but to see whether it would remain navigable. There was a difference between descent and freefall. Systems often mistook one for the other until gravity corrected them.
