"The more people who care about you at a level that registers on the devotion tracker. Casual acquaintances don't move the needle. Sakura the nurse at eight percent attraction doesn't contribute. It requires genuine emotional investment sustained over time."
Yumi pulled a stool over and sat down at my eye level. "The divine-class graft you carry was designed by something that understands this principle at a level no human scientist has achieved. The patron who built your system didn't just give you a power source. They gave you a dependency on love. Literal, measurable, dimensionally quantifiable love. And they made your survival contingent on acquiring enough of it to keep the graft from consuming you."
She said the word love like a scientist says it. Like a measurable phenomenon with properties and constraints. No judgment, no warmth, no poetry. Just observation.
It still hit me in the chest like a Wave Motion blast.
Vale closed his phone. "We should discuss the timeline."
