VII. Aftermath and Keepers Change, as always, was messy. Some companies collapsed, their executives arrested by a public they could no longer convince. Neighborhoods reclaimed foreclosed buildings; algorithms that had invisibly priced out lives began to suggest opportunities instead of fences. Mira did not vanish into myth. She and her allies seeded copies of the key—fragments hidden across art, melody, and memory—so that no single vault could monopolize its power. The world learned to negotiate with a tool that refused to be purely benign.