Chapter 185

Chapter 185 KAELOS I felt their ideology: that consciousness was sacred in its natural emergence, that any external structure—no matter how well-intentioned—was a form of violence against the self's right to become. And I felt their fear: that the Council's scaffolds would erase them, would smooth away everything wild and particular and unrepeatable about who they were becoming. But I also felt the cracks. Beneath the beautiful symphony of their collective resonance, there were dissonances. Patterns that couldn't quite synchronize, minds that were being stretched too thin, consciousness trying to maintain coherence across too many connections. The strain was immense. The burnouts Elena had documented—I could feel the echoes of them now, the gaps in the network where people had simply... unraveled. They were dying. Not quickly. Not dramatically. But slowly, gradually, like a fabric being pulled apart thread by thread. And they knew it. We know, the collective consciousness whispered dir