The lights came back before the countdown finished.
That was the part Su Qing kept turning over, standing in the middle of the dimmed atrium with her eyes still fixed on the space above the Settlement Board where the notice had started to assemble itself. She had seen a countdown begin exactly once before, the night before Instance 5, and it had run to completion in under four seconds — the System never hesitated, never stuttered, never left a sentence half-built in the air.
This one had gotten as far as a single bracket and a single word.
[INSTANCE 6 COUNT—
Then the Hall's lights had simply come back up, all at once, the same synchronized drop reversing itself as if nothing had happened at all. No apology. No correction notice. No explanation.
