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[Ding! Acknowledged. Placement required: apex node at mountain's centroid, near hollow boundary. Physical embedding increases field coherence. Recommend highest terrace: Miryam's perch satisfies geometry.]
Kai felt his mouth twitch. "Of course it does."
He went up alone. The top air was clean, thin, and honest. Miryam's spot was exactly where the system's map wanted: the flat patch where she napped in the sun, tumbled stones arranged into a half-circle by small hands, a smooth pebble with her scratches — tiny counts only a child would make and only a parent would care to keep.
He took the two 9★ cores from the Soul-Cube. They were wrong and beautiful — cold light under stone, each the size of a fist with a weight the hand could feel and the mind didn't like to measure.
"Here," he said.
[Ding! Procedure: Set cores three paces apart on the exact midline. Rotate to align poles (markers appear now).]
