"State your designation," Finch said.
Luna's boots sank into the thin sheet of frost Kara left behind. Ice smoked against her soles. The chalk X under her feet was soft at the edges, blurred by Drake's furrow and Kara's white trail.
"Seven-Epsilon," she said.
Finch made one mark on his wax slate and lifted his stylus. On the balcony above, Representative Mirell stepped forward to the rail beside Calder. Her hands were folded, coat buttoned to the throat. She watched Luna without blinking.
Twenty feet behind the outer line, Elara stood with Master Chawng's canvas bag by her boots. Chawng was at the perimeter iron gate, hands clasped loosely behind his back, heavy canvas coat hanging still. Along the edge, Proctor Miller kept the thin crowd of students behind the outer line, the space around anomalies empty by habit now. Dr. Aris stood near the eastern tripod with his medical slate tucked under his arm. The Senior Logician Orderly adjusted a dampener reading and stepped back.
"Authorization granted," Finch said. "Phase one. Ironwood protocol. Construct cage."
The low hum from the eastern tripod dropped into silence.
The flagstones didn't drop. The black oil in the groove stayed still, a solid mirror reflecting the three stones without ripple.
Luna's hands went out.
Soft green light flickered in her palms, the same light that had knitted flesh in the handling yard and steadied bleeding hands when no one else could. It rose for a breath, warm against the frost. Then it caught nothing.
The courtyard was dead stone, raked flat before dawn. No soil seam. No root bed. Oil and frost and flagstone. There was no life to answer.
The green flickered and died.
Finch watched the stone.
"Construct not manifested."
From the balcony, Mirell's voice carried down, even. "Zero independent generation."
Luna's fingers hooked, searching. Not for a shoulder to steady. For anything living. Her mind mapped the way it always had for injuries, looking for a wound to read, for tissue to find, but there was no wound. Her hands had always known what to do when someone was bleeding. Empty air gave them nothing.
Then she found it.
Between two flagstones at the very edge of the chalk X, almost under the smear of frost, a single weed root, thin as hair, kept alive by rainwater that had slipped under stone. Pale and trembling. Around her ankles, so faint only she and James could see, faint green stress lines rose like heat haze.
"Luna, there," James whispered from the fence. His right eye was fixed on that seam, the slate gray slit catching the thread.
She could. She knew the pull, the twist, the quick tear that would force it up. It would be thin and dry and would break if anyone touched it, but it would be a cage. It would be enough for the printed line to be satisfied. Finch could log a shape. Mirell would have a number for the generation column.
It would also kill the only living thing in the circle.
Luna looked at the root. Looked at the green light trying again in her own hands, reflecting in the oil mirror.
In the maintenance column, with children coughing around them and rain coming through the roof, Chawng had shown her how to hold a root without pulling it. He had placed her palm over soil and told her to feel where it wanted to go, not where she wanted it to be.
She closed her hands and let the green fade rather than rip.
The courtyard stayed empty. No cage. No vine. Nothing for the stone to record.
Finch's stylus moved twice, incisions sharp and clean.
"Construct not manifested."
He had to try the second protocol.
"Restorative metric."
No patient in the ring. Rule said spectators stay behind the outer line. Elara's hand shifted on the canvas bag. She didn't step forward.
Luna held out her hands again. Green light appeared, soft and steady this time, empty. No wound to map. No heartbeat to find. Her palms were dry. Her core was quiet.
"I need a patient," she said. "There is no patient."
Mirell answered before Finch could. "Metric requires output."
Luna lowered her hands. The green went out.
"Then metric is incomplete."
Finch looked at her, then at Mirell. He lifted his stylus and wrote the only thing that was true without adding anything that was not.
"Restorative metric incomplete," he read aloud. "Utility undetermined."
The words sat in the cold air. Not passed. Not failed. Calder frowned at undetermined from the balcony, but Finch didn't look up. He had recorded what was in front of him.
For a moment no one moved. Frost smoked under Luna's boots. The clear river stone from Kara's test still caught noon light on the middle tripod.
Xander and James were already moving, boots skidding on oil filmed stone before Finch cleared the slate, pulling Luna up by her arms. Her gray fingers were stiff from frost, lips split where she had bitten them holding the light.
Dr. Aris stepped forward. He glanced at split lip and gray fingers, then at Finch.
"Log as minor tissue damage, no intervention required. Asset ambulatory." He tucked his slate and walked away toward the gate.
Chawng didn't speak. He watched Luna from the gate, hands still behind his back. He didn't call the next name. He didn't move.
On the flagstone where she had closed her hands, the single weed root was still alive.
Faint green. Intact.