The faded-refresh bug was not a whole-page theme failure because paragraph text stayed readable while headings and sidebar labels washed out. That told us the race lived in the selector stack for those specific surfaces, not in global page tokens. On some reloads, framework or sidebar-related selectors were effectively winning before Vyasa's intended heading and sidebar colors settled. The fix in header.css was genuine because it removed ambiguity: headings and sidebar text now explicitly use var(--vyasa-ink) instead of depending on inherited color from surrounding components.