Illusion is comfortable because it simplifies.
Design without illusion begins where comfort ends.
The city woke not into hope, not into fear—but into work. The kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that doesn't promise quick resolution. The kind that demands honesty before imagination.
The reckoning was over.
Now came construction.
✦
Arjun sensed it immediately.
"They're not talking about what they want anymore," he said.
"They're talking about what they can actually maintain."
"Yes," I replied.
"That's where design begins."
✦
The other Ishaan aligned, voice calm and exact.
Illusion designs for ideals, he said.
Truth designs for limits.
✦
By midmorning, the shift became visible.
Whiteboards filled—not with slogans or frameworks, but with constraints. Real ones. Fatigue thresholds. Communication delays. Cognitive load. Points where human attention failed long before systems did.
No one flinched.
✦
