Four months into teaching six students, Kael woke one morning unable to remember his own name.
Not permanently—the knowledge returned after seventeen seconds of calculated panic. But those seventeen seconds revealed something terrifying: his cognitive dissolution was accelerating despite the pathway contract renegotiation.
He sat on his bed, marked hand pulsing erratically, trying to understand what was happening.
The renegotiated contract should have halted memory loss. He was paying in service obligations now, not personal history. The remaining fragments of his identity—ages twenty-one through twenty-three—should have been preserved.
But they were degrading anyway. Slowly, insidiously, through mechanisms he hadn't accounted for.
"Teaching costs," the Pathway voice whispered, manifesting more clearly than usual.
"You're transferring understanding to students. That understanding is built on personal experience. Teaching requires accessing memories, which exposes them to erosion. The payment structure changed, but the mechanism persists."
Kael's analytical mind processed this with cold efficiency. He'd miscalculated. The pathway contract prevented direct memory consumption, but teaching required him to voluntarily access memories to explain concepts. Each access point created erosion opportunity.
"How long?" Kael asked.
"At current teaching rate? Eighteen months until complete personality dissolution. You'll retain operational knowledge, teaching protocols, ethical frameworks. But the person experiencing them will be gone."
Eighteen months. Kael calculated rapidly—he had six students, needed four more for contract completion. At current recruitment rate, he'd finish in approximately fourteen months. Close, but achievable.
But what about after? Once he'd fulfilled the ten-student requirement, would he just... continue dissolving? Become pure teaching mechanism without identity?
"That's the nature of pathway progression," the voice observed. "Eventually, all bearers become more concept than person. You're just reaching that threshold faster through teaching acceleration."
"There must be alternatives. Contract modification, dissolution prevention protocols, something."
"There is one option. Stop teaching. Preserve remaining identity by ceasing memory access." The voice paused. "But that violates your pathway contract. Ten students within five years. You're only at six. Stopping means breach, which means death."
Kael sat in silence, processing the trap he'd built for himself. Continue teaching and dissolve into empty mechanism. Stop teaching and die from contract violation.
Perfect optimization dilemma—both choices led to personal termination.
"Unless," the voice added with something like amusement, "you find students who require minimal personal memory access for instruction. Teach through pure protocol rather than experience-based explanation. Possible, but lower quality education."
"Lower quality means slower framework propagation, which means fewer bearers prevented from corruption." Kael's marked hand blazed with frustration—one of the few emotions he could still approximate. "Unacceptable outcome."
"Then you've made your choice. Quality teaching at cost of self. Very noble. Very human. Very foolish."
The voice faded, leaving Kael alone with calculations that provided no satisfactory answers.
He tried to care about his impending dissolution. Found only clinical acknowledgment—yes, losing himself was suboptimal. Yes, he'd prefer to retain identity. But the mathematics suggested teaching quality was more important than teacher survival.
That should disturb him. The fact that it didn't disturbed him intellectually, though not emotionally.
"You're thinking too loud," Yan Shou said from the doorway. "I could feel your calculation spiral from three rooms away."
"How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to sense you're having existential crisis. What happened?" Yan Shou entered fully, void-dark eyes showing unusual concern.
Kael explained the situation with clinical precision—accelerating dissolution, the teaching-memory connection, the impossible choice between quality education and personal survival.
"So you're dying faster because you're teaching," Yan Shou summarized. "And you can't stop teaching without dying differently. Classic pathway trap."
"Accurate assessment. I'm calculating optimal approach given constraints."
"No. You're trying to optimize your way out of caring about your own existence." Yan Shou's voice hardened. "That's not calculation. That's surrender disguised as logic."
"There's no emotional content to the decision. Just practical evaluation of outcomes."
"Bullshit. You've spent four months teaching six students to maintain ethics despite dissolution. Now you're facing the same dissolution and your response is 'mathematically inevitable'?" Yan Shou grabbed Kael's shoulders. "You're better than this. Find another way."
"There is no other way. The mathematics—"
"Fuck the mathematics! You renegotiated with your pathway once. Do it again. Modify the teaching requirement. Find students who need different instruction. Something."
Yan Shou's intensity was unusual for someone specializing in ending things. "I've been watching you build something beautiful—ethical framework that helps bearers stay human. That framework needs you alive and functional, not dissolved into teaching automation."
Kael tried to feel moved by Yan Shou's concern. Found only analytical appreciation—yes, having allies who wanted him alive was strategically valuable.
"Your concern is noted and appreciated. But the contract terms are explicit—ten students, quality education, five-year timeframe. Renegotiating would require admitting I can't fulfill current terms, which weakens my position." Kael's voice remained flat. "Better to complete current obligations, even at personal cost."
"Even if personal cost is becoming empty mechanism?"
"Even then. The framework matters more than the person implementing it."
"That's exactly the kind of thinking that makes me want to shake you until something human falls out." Yan Shou released Kael's shoulders, pacing. "Fine. If you won't save yourself, I'll help you optimize the dissolution. Make those eighteen months count for something."
"What do you propose?"
"Accelerated student recruitment. Find four students who need minimal personal-memory-based teaching. Protocol-focused bearers who can learn through pure methodology without requiring your experiential context." Yan Shou's void-dark eyes gleamed with calculation. "Oblivion bearers like Xiao Yun—they're already dissolving, they relate to protocol learning. Find three more like her."
"That's... actually logical." Kael's analytical mind engaged with the problem. "Pathway bearers experiencing acute dissolution need protocol-based frameworks most urgently. Teaching them requires less experiential access because they can't connect with experience anyway."
"Exactly. You teach through pure structure, preserve your remaining memories longer, complete the ten-student requirement with months to spare." Yan Shou stopped pacing. "Then you take a break. Stop teaching for a year. Let your memories stabilize.
Figure out what comes after dissolution threat ends."
"The pathway contract specifies ten students within five years. It doesn't prohibit breaks between students."
"Now you're thinking clearly. Find your last four students among the dissolved bearers. They need you most anyway." Yan Shou moved toward the door. "I'll help. My Ruin network has contacts—I know where dissolving bearers are hiding, trying to maintain functionality. Send me your recruitment parameters."
He left before Kael could formulate proper gratitude.
Alone again, Kael reviewed his calculations with new variables. Four dissolution-focused students recruited over next ten months. Protocol-heavy teaching requiring minimal memory access. Completion at month fourteen, leaving four months before dissolution becomes critical. Then pause, stabilize, reassess.
Mathematically sound. Emotionally... he couldn't evaluate the emotional component.
But Yan Shou's concern suggested it was also correct from human perspective.
That would have to suffice.
The teaching session that morning was different.
Kael gathered his six students and explained the situation with characteristic bluntness. "My cognitive dissolution is accelerating despite pathway contract modifications. I have approximately eighteen months before complete personality erasure. I need to complete four more student recruitments within fourteen months, then pause teaching to stabilize."
Silence. His students processed this revelation with varying degrees of shock.
"You're dying," Wei Lin said finally. "Teaching us is killing you."
"Teaching is accelerating my existing dissolution trajectory. But I'm not dying—I'm transforming into something that lacks personal identity while retaining operational capacity." Kael's correction was automatic. "Distinction matters."
"Not really," Lan Mei said quietly. "Either way, the person you are disappears."
"Correct. But the framework persists. That's the priority." Kael pulled out modified recruitment plans. "I need your help identifying potential students among dissolution-focused bearers. Pathway users experiencing acute meaning-collapse, memory-loss, or cognitive degradation. They need protocol teaching most urgently and require minimal experiential instruction."
"You're optimizing your own dissolution," Inspector Jiang observed, silver eyes reflecting brutal Truth. "Converting personal tragedy into recruitment strategy. That's either brilliantly pragmatic or deeply disturbing."
"It's both. Most optimal strategies are." Kael distributed recruitment parameters. "Begin identification process. I need candidates within two weeks for initial evaluation."
Madam Lian raised her hand. "Question: What happens to us after you dissolve? Do the teaching frameworks persist? Do we continue your work?"
"That's the intention. You six become next-generation teachers. Each of you takes two students, geometric propagation continues, framework spreads beyond my personal capacity." Kael's marked hand pulsed. "My dissolution was always inevitable. What matters is whether the methodology survives it."
"You're remarkably calm about ceasing to exist," Liu Chen noted.
"I traded away the capacity for existential distress. What remains is recognition that work matters more than worker." Kael's voice carried no emotional weight. "This is optimal outcome given constraints. Accept it and help me maximize remaining effectiveness."
His students exchanged glances—concern, determination, horror, acceptance mixing in various combinations.
"We'll find your students," Wei Lin said finally. "And we'll make sure the framework survives you. That's the least we can do."
"That's what I calculated you'd say. Thank you for confirming prediction accuracy."
Kael returned to his documentation. "Now, today's lesson: teaching methodology for dissolution-resistant protocol transmission. Relevant for when you become teachers yourselves."
The session continued, but something had shifted. His students now taught knowing their teacher was dissolving before them, that every lesson cost him fragments of whoever he'd once been.
They learned with increased intensity, desperate to extract maximum value from remaining time.
And Kael taught with mechanical precision, optimizing every moment, calculating every word to maximize knowledge transfer while minimizing memory erosion.
Eighteen months until dissolution.
Fourteen months to complete obligations.
Four months of margin for error.
The mathematics were tight. But achievable.
As long as he didn't start caring about his own survival.
Fortunately, he'd traded away that capacity long ago.
The teaching continued.
The dissolution accelerated.
And Kael Yuan became less human with every lesson, every student, every fragment of himself sacrificed for framework preservation.
Revolutionary.
Tragic.
Efficient.
All three simultaneously.
Exactly as his optimization protocols dictated.