Because now he understood: the student version never stops you from being great. It just stops you from pretending you already are.

That night, Leo deleted the animation. He opened a fresh project file— Student Version —and stared at the node limit. 512,000. Not enough. Never enough. But for the first time, he didn’t see a cage.

“Leo,” she said, not unkindly. “Why is your heat flux symmetric to seven decimal places?”