Finger still hovering at 02:13.
Vanar Virtua metaverse plaza half-empty, half-AFK. VGN match just ended in Shard 4. I pushed the flag at 02:14.
Not 02:15. Not "after the thread." 02:14 hits the session receipt feed and the room can argue later.
Internal note said beta. Experience design said ship. I listened.
First player hit it at 02:16. Virtua avatar, that ridiculous cape from last season's Vanar games network VGN drop. They didn't know. Wallet-less handoff. No modal asking permission. No pause long enough to feel weight.
Just claiming before the next match queued.
I refreshed the live environment update feed. Nothing red. Nothing yellow. I check websocket subs out of reflex. Still clean. Of course. That's Vanar boring thing.
Then I saw it.
The shape—that specific claim path, inventory flick to equip to sprint toward the VGN lobby—locked in. Not in code. In muscle.
Session receipt patterns kept ticking on Vanar consumer focused mass usage layer-1. Same nonce band. Clean.
They repeated it before I wrote the "known issues" doc.
I meant to iterate.
02:47. Discord exploded. "Why's the beta live?" Someone pinged the Virtua mods. Mods didn't panic—plaza was calm. That made it worse. I checked timestamps. 02:14. Before the thread. Before alignment. Before I could type "we're testing."
Vanar ( @Vanarchain ) had already closed it. State advanced. Persistent. By the time the thread caught up, the loop was already muscle. Just...
Now when I propose changes, I see the loop they learned at 02:16. The cape. The sprint. The queue.
They don't know there was a beta.
I do.
And I keep pushing flags at 02:14. Watching for the next cape. The next glass tower. The next seasonal drop that learns before I name it. Plaza keeps building. On shapes I didn't mean to freeze.