Starwick - the whole loop finally runs

Quick one. The vertical slice is playable end to end now, and for the first time it actually feels like the thing I pitched myself instead of a pile of systems that happen to compile.

What the loop is

You’re a Wick - a small candle-soul whose job is to relight dying stars. The
slice is one star:

• Drag your finger across five dim points to trace the constellation.
• It catches. The star reignites - motes spiral in, a core ignites, a shockwave
  ring pushes out, your companion reacts, the camera breathes.
• The sky asks what you want to do with it. Two answers: let it rest, or send it
  onward.
• You pick. The world shifts to match - warm gold if you send it on, a colder dim if you let it rest - the ending plays, and then it offers to begin again.

The bug that actually mattered

The choice screen looked done before it was done. Two buttons, tap one, ending plays. Fine. Except the constellation and the companion both live in the same world behind that screen, and they were still listening. So a tap meant to pick “send it onward” also poked the companion, and a stray drag re-traced stars that were already lit. The UI was a sheet of glass with holes in it.

The fix was boring and correct: one piece of state that says “something modal is up - dialogue, journal, or a choice.” Everything in the world that reads input
checks it first and shuts up while it’s true. Once that landed, taps stopped leaking and the choice felt like a choice instead of a coincidence.

Where it stands

The slice runs: trace, relight, choose, branch, two endings, restart - and the sky remembers the run. Everything’s checked by a headless pass that renders the scene and asserts on it, so I’m not eyeballing regressions every time.

What’s not there yet: it’s still a sky in front of you, not a place you walk through. Next is lifting the constellation into the actual world and building the
first realm you can move around in. That’s the jump from “pretty” to “somewhere.”