Two hands, or nothing.Three worlds made a pact-Earth, Echo, Third-and learned to act without breaking what they touched. The Duet Key.Listen is speech. Consent has a clock. The record is public.Now a fourth world answers. Loki. Fields first. Hands that tend → yield.The first public handshake fails. A ghost hand pretends to be a partner. Quarantine fog rolls. The room hears the no.Mira Osei reads rites like code. Deka Riall teaches cause → effect and names the flaw.Iven Coil keeps the no-solo line.Lio Vale speaks Loki's grammar-gesture before touch-and shows what the land already knows.They search old shelves and find a forgotten shape: chorus. Two pairs. Four living hands.Scale without harm. Or don't scale at all.A patient far Ping keeps time in the soil.A safeguard meant to stop has been flipped to move.Lone Star, the Anchor, will widen the listen window only after proof.The Fourth Strand launches Lone Star Trilogy 2 with a first-contact story built on ethics as engineering. Interfaces, not sermons. Counts, not speeches. The tension lives in the timing: Listen, Listen, Consent, Move, Hold.New to the universe? Start here. A brief preface brings you up to speed in a page. The chapter beats carry you the rest of the way. You'll learn the count by watching it land.What's at stake: A clean, careful way to grow-if the quartet can prove chorus without cheating the law of two.A quiet exploit that forges "second hands" and slips past consent, unless they name it and lock it down.A first handshake with a world that won't be rushed.What you'll find inside: A quartet you can hold onto-Mira (Earth), Deka (Echo), Iven (Third), Lio (Loki)-each with a job, a cadence, a cost.On-page Duet bars that show how actions land. Short, readable, part of the scene.Civic tech that treats transparency as power: public logs, oath pads, quarantine that slows harm instead of punishing people.A mystery in the dirt: scars that rhyme with the far Ping, pointing past this book.For readers who like first-contact done with care. Systems that make sense. High stakes without loud explosions every page. A story that trusts the count.They call the attempt The Fourth Strand.Two pairs. Four living hands.First contact, done right-if they can hold the window.