Night. The food truck sits alone in the ruined city's darkness. A single light glows from inside. No customers. No movement. Just Nari and the hum of her backend console.

Nari navigates to the backend. The System interface materializes—green text, cascading code, the cold architecture of the world.

Nari opens the Cook tag. The first layer of code is innocuous—recipe formatting, ingredient references. But underneath, something else.

Nari opens the DE-CONVERSION PROTOCOL. The code reveals its purpose. Her face drains of color.

Close-up on key lines of code. The parasitic nature of the Class shimmer is revealed in plain text.

Nari scrolls further. The scope of the farming operation becomes clear. Every Classed human. All of them.

Nari's mind races. The customers. All those desperate faces. Every single one of them is on a timer.

Nari scrolls to find information about her own recipes. What makes them different. Why they work.

The full weight of what she is crashes down on Nari. She is the only one. The bottleneck.

Nari tries to process. The math doesn't work. Seven billion people. One cook.

Nari's mind spirals. Every bowl she's ever served. Every person she chose to save without knowing it.

The Administrator's interface pings. A cold notification. It knows she looked.

Nari closes the console. She's seen enough. Maybe too much. The weight of it presses down.

Time passes. Dawn approaches. Nari hasn't moved. The first gray light seeps through the truck windows.

A shadow falls across the truck counter. Ha-jun has arrived. He's been watching.

Ha-jun speaks. His voice is low, quiet. He already knows what she found.

Ha-jun confirms it. He's known since the beginning. Since bowl one.

Ha-jun explains about his oath. The Sword Saint code that binds him to protect anomalies.

Ha-jun elaborates. The Sword Saints know about the System's true nature. They always have.

Ha-jun continues. The Sword Saints knew the Classes were a trap. They were created to fight it.

Ha-jun's expression shifts slightly. There's something more. Something he hasn't said.

Ha-jun elaborates. He chose her the moment he tasted her food. Not because of what she could do. Because of who she was.

Nari asks about the oath. What oath. What exactly binds him to her.

Ha-jun doesn't answer. He never answers. He just... stays. The mystery of the oath hangs in the air as dawn breaks.