diff --git a/PENDING.md b/PENDING.md
index dc4d552..997c90a 100644
--- a/PENDING.md
+++ b/PENDING.md
@@ -4560,7 +4560,38 @@ Run against step 1's extraction. **These check structural claims, not judgements
    verdicts were fixed first.
 3. **Then** one withheld cross-pair observation that depends on a sealed pair.
 
-**Awaiting:** the steward's two grades. **Nothing may be reported until they land.**
+#### ⚠ EXECUTOR FLAG — §5's sequencing, checked against what happened
+
+Not a judgement about content; a comparison of a filed rule against the record.
+
+> §5: *"**Before any result is reported:** the steward selects 2 of 9 and judges them
+> under §2 without seeing the jurist's verdicts."*
+
+**The steward has now received seven worked verdicts, the criterion clause each rests on,
+and the tally — including *"the null did not appear"* — before grading anything.** The two
+regrade pairs are sealed, so the letter about *those* verdicts holds. **The substitute
+control is weaker than designed regardless**, because a regrade is now made by someone who
+has read seven examples of this judge applying this criterion, in this voice, at length.
+That is anchoring, and §5 exists precisely to keep the second grader independent.
+
+⚠ **And the sealing choice compounds it, in a way the jurist named but did not connect
+here:** the two sealed pairs are the two read under the superseded criterion, so their
+disagreement was already ambiguous. **Now their agreement is also weakened.** Both
+directions of the control have lost force.
+
+**Not claimed:** that the verdicts are wrong, that the jurist breached anything
+deliberately, or that a clean control is still available. ⚠ **Whether §5 meant "reported"
+as *stated to the steward* or *reported as a finding* is genuinely ambiguous in the
+pre-registration, and the executor may not settle it** — it is the judge's and the
+steward's design.
+
+**The cheapest repair, if either wants one:** the steward grades **two different pairs**
+from the seven — the verdicts are visible, so that is no longer blind either. There may be
+no uncontaminated route left, and if so **the honest move is to record the control as
+degraded rather than to run it and call it a control.**
+
+**Awaiting:** the steward's two grades, and a ruling on the above. **The result is
+provisional until both.**
 
 
 ---