The same treatise that denies Will an opposite also slips in a warning about the Strata: the world holds shape because minds insist on seeing it that way. Every creature that perceives the world adds another thread of expectation, and the weave becomes harder to change. “Without substance, substance wouldn’t be,” the scribe jokes. It’s the natural counterpoint to the responsibility I outline in Will Against the World.

When I map historical accounts of grand workings the timeline tracks with population curves. Sparse eras brim with miracles, dense eras with bureaucracy. The book explains that trend. More people mean more shared assumptions, and those assumptions calcify the Strata until Expression feels like trying to sculpt granite with your breath.

The Ioma is the most vivid counterexample because its perpetual mist and isolated communities blunt the Strata’s gaze. When half the day disappears into vapor the world forgets itself just enough for Ether to seep through. That’s why folktales stay stubbornly alive there, and why visiting practitioners swear their Words are louder in the mists. The Strata can’t solidify what it cannot clearly see. This is a topic I explore further in the Mist-Engine Weather and Culture Woven from Mist.