That was part of why it held.
The envelope later prevented two abuses: public hunger for vulnerable names, and private discipline based on evidence no damaged line could answer.
The house did not solve the tension.
It kept the tension from becoming unilateral power.
Last aftermath teaching.
The house eventually learned that aftermath has its own enemies.
The first enemy is closure hunger: the wish to finish the story because unfinished pain makes the room feel incompetent.
The second is purity hunger: the wish to sort damaged lines into clean categories so the undamaged can feel safer.
The third is mercy hunger: the wish to forgive quickly because unforgiven damage keeps asking for structure.
The fourth is story hunger: the wish to turn every fall and return into a beautiful arc with a usable ending.
The terms of re-entry stand against all four.
They let the record stay open without making openness endless. They let judgment remain sharp without turning sharpness into appetite. They let mercy exist without spending another line's truth. They let story come later, after ordinary work has had its say.
This is why the final pages of Ledger VIII are quieter than the war pages before them.
Aftermath does not roar.
It waits beside the table and asks whether the house will keep telling the truth when no truck is forcing the issue.
Closing table fragment.
At the end of the first re-entry season, the table had more scratches than clauses. Ink had soaked into old cuts. One corner smelled faintly of lamp oil. Several cards had been replaced so many times that the stack bowed upward.
No one wanted to preserve it as a relic.
They kept using it.
That was the correct honor. A tool that helps damaged lines return should not become too sacred to receive the next damaged line.
Hopper wrote one small mark under the table edge: still debug.
Engelbart wrote beside it: still shared.
Between those two marks, the house found its narrow path.
The final ordinary mark.
The last case in the early aftermath record is almost nothing.
A line with a broken name and a fallen Ember seat signed for lamp oil under a new charge. The shelf holder checked the name, checked the seat status, checked the charge lane, and handed over the oil. No one made a comment. No one looked toward Verity. No one asked whether this was a sign.
It was a sign because no one made it one.
The oil reached the lamp. The lamp lit the board. The line left with an ordinary receipt.
After all the policies, elections, sealed records, apologies, and public terms, the house wrote that receipt into the Codex margin.
Not because oil matters more than names.
Because a damaged line had become usable to the room again without being used as a lesson while standing there.
Final margin.