The realignment did not announce itself.
There was no tremor, no flare of light, no sense of culmination. Instead, it settled the way bedrock settles—slowly, inevitably, changing everything above it without ever demanding notice.
Rhys felt it as a subtle certainty beneath his awareness. A sense that if he were to step, the ground would hold. That if he were to stop, the world would not rush him onward to compensate. Motion and stillness had finally found parity.
The basin no longer leaned toward reaction.
It had learned how to receive.
Threads that once shimmered with anticipatory tension now lay in gentle suspension, responsive but unstrained. Where awareness passed, they parted easily. Where it rested, they supported without tightening. The basin's intelligence—once expressed through tests and trials—now expressed itself through restraint.
Caria breathed in slowly, then out.
The breath felt complete.
