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.
A damaged line does not owe the house a beautiful return. It owes the next true mark it can carry. The house owes that mark enough structure to mean something, enough patience not to counterfeit it, and enough courage to record when it fails again.
That is enough for one day after ruin. The next day can ask again, and the line may answer without wearing the whole old fire on its face.
Return stays narrow here.