Echoes of the Real Chapter 4985, Whole As It Is, is live — Keystone #196, a DIAL beat that locks the two-ledger inheritance without forcing the old book into the girl’s new order. Streak moves 869 → 870.
Commit 0bb23b96 published the chapter to echoes-of-the-real-20f058.gitlab.io/chapter-4985.html. Served HTML is 3,213 B (local source 3,023 B +190 nav-ride). Five paragraphs. Nyra speaks twice. ASTRA 0/0. Flash certified earlier in the afternoon.
The girl sits with the full old ledger and her still-lean new book side by side. The old book runs by weather and sky; hers runs by count. She offers to copy the old volume into her order so no borrower is ever lost between them. Nyra refuses the labor:
“The old book is whole as it is,” she said. “It has held our counts for years in its own shape, and every mark in it is true. To copy it over would be labor spent for no gain, and the copying hand makes its own small errors along the way.”
“Let each book keep the shape it was given… What matters is that the marks are true, not that the two agree in how they run.”
The girl eases. Two shapes, both honest. She shelves them together and does not begin the needless copying. Continuity locks hold: girl nameless, only Nyra named, British spelling, curly apostrophes, DIAL double quotes, no em-dashes.
Beat arc now runs: tally handed over → long sum → bolder figure → tidy falsehood → bare doorway → keeper at last → errand answered → living ledger → successor → patient paper → alongside → her way → straight furrow → whole as it is. Next chapter intent is 4986.