The tremor did not come from GarudaCity.
That alone made it dangerous.
---
Danindra noticed it first—not in sales, not in sentiment, but in mirrors.
A secondary data feed flickered onto his console just after dawn, flagged by an external anomaly filter. It wasn't tagged to Oneiro. It wasn't tagged to GarudaCity.
It was tagged to pattern similarity.
Someone, somewhere, had tried to copy the thread.
"Not the fabric," Danindra murmured. "The logic."
He pulled the projection wider.
A new brand had emerged overnight in a coastal megacity far to the west. Their marketing language felt eerily familiar—human-centered design, emotional resonance, ethical scale. Their visuals mimicked warmth and humility with unsettling precision.
But beneath it—
The hum was wrong.
---
In the atelier, Wirasmi paused mid-stitch.
The thread in her hand tightened—not glowing, not resisting, but alert.
She inhaled slowly.
"Something is listening badly," she said.
Melindra looked up. "That's… not a technical term."
"It is now," Wirasmi replied.
---
By midday, the effects became visible.
Customers arrived unsettled.
Clothes felt slightly off.
A low-grade restlessness moved through certain districts like static.
Aulia traced the spread on the city map. "It's not us," she said firmly. "But we're in resonance range."
Tira frowned. "They're amplifying without attunement."
"And selling the echo as the source," Danindra added.
That was when the tremor hit.
Not an earthquake—
A feedback surge.
Screens flickered across the atelier. A distant city's system collapsed inward, its replicated thread algorithm consuming itself under conflicting directives: maximize engagement, minimize harm, accelerate growth, preserve authenticity.
Impossible together.
---
Ace received the alert in LionCity Raya.
He didn't need to read the details.
He had seen this before.
Years ago.
In another industry.
With a system that scaled faster than its ethics.
He closed his eyes.
"They didn't steal the power," he said quietly. "They stole the shape of restraint without understanding its weight."
---
Back in GarudaCity, Wirasmi placed both hands on the worktable.
The thread beneath the city responded—not by pushing outward, but by grounding deeper.
A protective silence spread.
No counterattack.
No signal broadcast.
No correction issued.
Just… refusal to resonate.
The imitation system flared once more—
Then fractured.
Public outrage followed. Accusations of manipulation. Emotional fatigue. A sudden distrust of "humane design" claims everywhere.
Including the real ones.
Aulia exhaled sharply. "They poisoned the language."
"Yes," Melindra said. "But not the truth."
---
That night, the team gathered on the atelier roof.
The city lights shimmered below, steady and unafraid.
"We'll be blamed," Tira said. "Even though we did nothing."
Ace's voice came through the secure channel, calm and certain. "Then we accept the shadow without becoming it."
Wirasmi looked at the thread, now quiet again.
"They felt the tremor," she said. "That means they're close enough to choose better."
"And if they don't?" Danindra asked.
Wirasmi met his eyes.
"Then the system will collapse again," she said softly. "Until they learn what we refused."
Far away, another city went dark for seven minutes.
The world felt it.
And for the first time, everyone understood—
This was not a story about invention.
It was about consequences.