"…Since you take full responsibility for him," the old woman's voice crackled through the line, low and crisp, "there will be consequences, Elius."
Her words hung in the air like frost. Elius didn't move. He didn't blink. He stood still beneath the metal latticework of the sky dome garden, the filtered sunlight washing his pale skin in a cold golden hue, and he listened without resistance.
"You understand what this means?" she continued. Her voice was neither cruel nor soft—it was simply heavy, like the voice of someone long burdened with hard truths. "You're not a detached party. You're not a bystander who stepped in out of curiosity. You interfered in official classification protocols. You intervened in a high-risk individual's trajectory. You made that choice. And now, you're binding yourself to the outcome."
A faint hum buzzed on the line. She was reading from something now, probably his updated profile or the disciplinary review, perhaps even both.
