Kael didn't sleep.
Not because he was afraid—but because sleep assumed continuity.
And continuity was exactly what the Null Accord rejected.
He stood at the edge of the valley long after Mira and Rae had retreated to camp, watching the place where reality had folded itself closed. Nothing marked it now. No scar. No residue.
Only missing expectation.
Ashveil spoke quietly.
"Null interaction leaves no persistence trace."
Kael nodded. "Which means we can't track them."
"Correct."
"And we can't predict them."
"Correct."
Kael exhaled. "Then tell me what we can do."
A pause.
Not hesitation.
Limitation.
"We can fail in smaller ways."
The first test was Kael's idea.
That should have worried him more.
He returned to the valley at dawn, this time alone, his field extended just enough to anchor himself without influencing the terrain. He didn't attempt alignment. He didn't impose order.
He listened for absence.
Ashveil warned him.
"Null phenomena do not announce themselves."
"I know," Kael said quietly. "But systems still cast shadows."
He knelt and placed his hand against the stone.
Nothing answered.
Then—less than nothing.
A pocket where expectation thinned. Where the future felt shorter.
Kael reacted instantly, collapsing probability outward, attempting to force coherence back into the gap.
For half a second—
It worked.
The air stabilized. The stone hardened. The gap resisted collapse.
Kael felt a rush of relief.
Then the counteraction arrived.
The stabilized zone didn't break.
It detached.
A slab of reality—two meters wide—simply ceased to be his problem. It didn't explode. It didn't resist.
It opted out.
Kael staggered back as the ground vanished where he'd been kneeling.
His heart hammered.
"That was a mistake," he whispered.
Ashveil answered, cold.
"Confirmed."
Rae arrived minutes later, breathless.
"What did you do?" she demanded.
Kael stared at the empty space where ground should have been. "I tried to fix it."
She knelt at the edge, instruments screaming uselessly. "You didn't counter null. You triggered separation."
Mira swore. "You made it worse."
"Yes," Kael said. "I did."
That settled something unpleasant.
They moved to controlled testing after that.
Remote probes. Anchored drones. Layered resonance pulses—Kael coordinating, Rae observing.
Every attempt followed the same pattern:
Alignment provoked null
Resistance accelerated exclusion
Withdrawal reduced damage—but never reversed it
"Null isn't opposing us," Rae said finally. "It's responding to engagement."
Kael leaned against a rock, exhausted. "Like a system that deletes any file you try to open."
Ashveil corrected him.
"Like a system that deletes the concept of access."
Mira stared into the valley. "So what happens if they target a city?"
Kael didn't answer.
Because they already knew.
That night, Kael made a decision he hated.
He stopped experimenting.
No more probing.
No more testing.
No more curiosity.
Because every attempt created more edges the Null Accord could exploit.
"They want us to learn by failing," Kael said quietly to Mira. "And every failure costs reality."
Mira crossed her arms. "So we do nothing?"
"No," Kael replied. "We change what learning means."
Ashveil spoke.
"Clarify."
Kael closed his eyes.
"We stop trying to fight null," he said. "And start asking where it can't afford to act."
Silence followed.
Rae's eyes widened slowly. "You mean—"
"Yes," Kael said. "Dependency."
Mira frowned. "They hate it."
"They erase it," Kael corrected. "Which means places built without keystones… matter less to them."
Ashveil paused.
Then:
"Strategic reframing acknowledged."
Kael looked back toward the valley.
Null couldn't be countered.
Null couldn't be dominated.
But null still chose targets.
And choice—even destructive choice—was constraint.
"They don't erase everything," Kael said softly. "They erase foundations."
Mira's voice was grim. "Which means they'll come for you again."
"Yes," Kael said.
"And they'll come for anyone like you," Rae added.
Kael nodded.
"That means Arc 3 isn't about stopping them," he said quietly.
"It's about making the world harder to erase."
Ashveil spoke, steady and absolute.
"Objective shift accepted."
Kael straightened.
For the first time since the Null Accord revealed itself, he wasn't reacting.
He was reframing the war.
"You can't fight absence," Kael said.
"But you can make it starve."
Far away, the Null Accord analyzed the valley's new topology.
They noted Kael's withdrawal.
And adjusted.
Because now, Kael Vorrin wasn't trying to win.
He was trying to deny clean removal.
And that would force the first real mistake—from them.