Kael didn't call it a doctrine.
That would've made it brittle.
Instead, he shared practices.
Not instructions.
Not blueprints.
Patterns.
Small things, at first.
In settlements like Ridge-End, he talked to people who already lived between systems. He listened more than he spoke. When he did speak, it was never about null, or enemies, or survival against erasure.
He talked about redundancy.
"Don't put all your tools in one place," he told a mechanic who ran three half-broken workshops instead of one clean one.
"Don't let one person be the answer," he said to a food runner who always showed up first when things went wrong.
He never said why.
He didn't need to.
Rae watched the data shift over weeks, not days.
"These areas are getting noisier," she said, fingers dancing over fractured graphs. "Less efficient. Less predictable."
Kael nodded. "That's the goal."
Mira frowned. "You're making places harder to govern."
"Yes."
"And harder to help."
Kael didn't answer immediately.
Ashveil spoke instead.
"Resilience trades optimization for survivability."
Mira looked away. "That's a clean way to say 'people will suffer more.'"
Kael met her gaze. "They already do. The difference is who absorbs it."
The first consequence came sooner than expected.
A town two regions south tried to copy Ridge-End.
Badly.
They dismantled their emergency council overnight. Split responsibilities without overlap. Tore down centralized storage without replacement.
Chaos followed.
Not adaptive chaos.
Panic chaos.
A fire broke out in a residential block. No one knew who was supposed to respond. Everyone assumed someone else would.
By the time help arrived, three homes were gone.
No deaths.
But the anger burned hotter than the fire ever had.
"They followed your ideas," Mira said quietly, watching the footage.
"They followed half of them," Kael replied.
Rae snapped, "You didn't give them the other half!"
Kael flinched.
That hurt because it was true.
Ashveil spoke, colder than usual.
"Dissemination without context increases harm probability."
Kael clenched his jaw. "I know."
Mira crossed her arms. "So what now? You going to pull back?"
Kael shook his head slowly. "No."
"Then you're going to get people hurt," she said.
"Yes," Kael agreed.
The word landed heavy.
"But fewer than if I do nothing."
They went to the town personally.
Not as saviors.
Not as leaders.
Kael didn't stabilize the fire zone. Didn't reorganize the response.
He stood in the ash with the people who'd lost their homes and listened.
Someone shouted at him.
"You told us not to rely on structure!"
Kael nodded. "I told you not to rely on single structures."
Another voice cracked. "We thought we were doing it right."
Kael swallowed. "You weren't wrong. You were incomplete."
Silence followed.
Not forgiveness.
But attention.
Kael spent three days there.
Not fixing.
Explaining.
Why redundancy mattered.
Why overlap felt inefficient but saved lives.
Why disorder without responsibility was just neglect wearing new clothes.
Rae documented everything.
Mira watched people argue—and slowly reorganize themselves.
Not cleanly.
But sturdier.
Ashveil observed.
"Contextual teaching reduces failure rate."
Kael exhaled. "Then that's the rule."
Afterward, Kael changed approach.
He stopped speaking to groups.
He spoke to pairs.
To conflicting roles.
To rivals.
To people who disagreed.
He seeded tension, not consensus.
"Never let agreement settle too comfortably," he told them. "That's when things break quietly."
The advice spread unevenly.
Which was exactly right.
That night, Kael sat alone on a rooftop, city lights distant and unfocused.
Mira joined him.
"You're playing a dangerous game," she said.
Kael nodded. "Yes."
"And you don't know how bad the fallout will be."
"No."
She studied him. "Then why keep going?"
Kael looked up at the stars.
"Because the Null Accord erases clean lines," he said softly. "The only thing they hesitate before… is mess."
Ashveil spoke.
"Teaching disorder increases entropy."
Kael smiled faintly.
"Good," he said. "Entropy remembers mistakes."
Far away, the Null Accord recalculated.
They flagged new zones.
Not erased.
Deferred.
Because disorder, once taught, didn't stay obedient.
And that made it dangerous.