Vega

Vega tended a night garden before the Guild — a plot where certain flowers poisoned each other if planted too close. She couldn't cluster them; each needed its ring of clear soil. And every bed had to hold its exact quota, no bed favored. She'd learned to place the hardest flower first — the one with the fewest legal beds left — because once it was in, its forbidden ring rearranged everything.

"You don't fill the garden," the old gardener told her. "You rule out the garden. Plant one, and half your choices vanish. Follow the vanishings." Vega found she loved the vanishings more than the plantings. A single well-placed star cascaded — this cell forbidden, so that region's only remaining spot is forced, so its ring forbids more — a quiet chain reaction across the whole map.

Ada recruited her after watching her solve a Star Battle by placing almost nothing and forbidding almost everything. "You barely set any stars," Ada said.

"Stars are the last thing I do," Vega said. "First I find a region so small, or so hemmed-in, that a star has only one legal cell left. That cell is forced. Then its ring forbids its neighbours, which shrinks the next region, which forces the next star. Same as Onlie removing candidates — mine just have to keep their distance."

Her craft is the ripple. She marks forbidden cells generously: a full row that already has its quota of stars gets every remaining cell crossed out; the ring around each star, crossed out; a region that can only fit its stars one way, locked. Where a region, row, or column has exactly as many open cells as required stars, every open cell becomes a star. The map tightens until the stars have nowhere to be but their proper, spaced-apart places.

A boy placed two stars diagonally adjacent, corners kissing.

"Do those two touch?" Vega asked, without a hint of blame.

He looked. "Only at the corner."

"Corners count. A star's ring is all eight neighbours." He un-placed one and looked stuck. "Now — that region still needs its star, but this cell is in the ring of the star you kept. So it's forbidden. Which cells in that region are left?" He scanned. Only one cell in the whole region sat outside every ring. "There," he said. "It has to be there." The forced cell placed itself, spaced clear of every other star.

"You didn't choose it," Vega said. "You forbade everything else."