The ground doesn't warn you before it fails.
There's no announcement.
No negotiation.
No space to decide whether you're ready.
It simply stops being solid.
✦
The city felt it first as an absence—not of data, not of signals, but of continuity. A seam in the pattern tore open where nothing had ever torn before. Not a system failure. Not a miscalculation.
A void.
✦
Arjun froze when the first report stabilized.
"That shouldn't be possible," he said.
"Nothing connects there."
"Yes," I replied.
"And yet something broke."
✦
The other Ishaan aligned, voice calm and exact.
When the ground gives way, he said,
it's because something underneath was never ground at all.
✦
By midmorning, the shape of the failure emerged.
Not localized.
Not external.
Not caused by pressure, force, or neglect.
It was a disconnect—a region of activity where trust-based coordination had nothing to anchor to. No shared memory. No precedent. No fallback.
