Vayukshi changed at night.
Not in structure.
In attention.
The pale stone towers caught unfamiliar light as if the sky were not merely above them, but aware. Shadows gathered where they had no reason to gather. The faint hum beneath the city deepened—no longer background, but presence.
Ira felt it the moment she stepped outside the Hall of Still Waters.
Something followed her.
Not footsteps.
Expectation.
She drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders and exhaled slowly, grounding herself the way she had learned over years of living inside other people's emotions.
Observe. Don't absorb.
Yet the weight in her chest did not respond.
It shifted.
Like something turning to look back at her.
"Does the city ever… watch you?" she asked quietly.
Devansh, who walked a short distance ahead, slowed.
"It watches everything," he said. "But it rarely reacts."
"And now?"
He glanced at her. "Now it does."
They moved along one of the upper walkways, high enough that Ira could see beyond the inner walls—vast stretches of silent architecture layered like the remains of civilizations that had forgotten how to die.
No smoke.
No fire.
No signs of ordinary life.
And yet the city did not feel empty.
She pressed her palm lightly to the stone railing.
The moment her skin met it, sensation rushed through her.
Not temperature.
Memory.
Her breath stuttered.
She saw—no, felt—hands shaping these stones. Not human hands. Not immortal ones either. Something in between. Something trembling. Something afraid of what it was creating.
Ira pulled back sharply.
The vision vanished.
She stared at her fingers.
Devansh was beside her instantly.
"What happened?"
"I…" She swallowed. "I touched the city."
"And?"
"It felt like touching a scar."
His gaze sharpened. "The city is not sentient."
"Then why does it remember?"
That question unsettled even him.
They continued in silence, but Ira's mind did not.
The heaviness in her chest no longer felt like something foreign pressing inward.
It felt… arranged.
As if something had been placed there deliberately long ago.
"Devansh," she said after a while, "what were you before this place?"
He did not answer immediately.
"I was human," he said at last. "Once."
She waited.
"Then I was desperate."
She nodded faintly. "And after that?"
He looked ahead at the vast, unmoving skyline. "After that, I became responsible for a mistake that did not end."
Her steps slowed.
"Did you choose it?"
"Yes."
"Did you understand it?"
"No."
She felt that answer like a bruise.
They reached a circular terrace open to the sky. In its center lay an ancient pool, dark and unreflective, as though it refused to hold even light.
Devansh stopped.
"You should not touch that," he said.
Ira almost smiled. Almost.
"Everything here responds when I touch it."
"That is not response," he said. "That is recognition."
The word sent a quiet tremor through her.
"Recognition of what?"
He hesitated.
"I do not know," he admitted. "And that is what troubles me."
She approached the pool anyway.
Not recklessly.
Reverently.
The surface did not ripple when she knelt. It did not mirror her face. It waited.
When Ira extended her fingers and let them break the surface, the world fractured.
Not into images.
Into layers.
She felt a woman screaming without sound.
She felt a city being anchored to reality by something that should never have been bound.
She felt immortality being written not in blood—but in emotion.
Grief shaped into law.
Love twisted into structure.
Fear preserved as eternity.
Ira's breath hitched violently.
She saw herself.
Not as she was.
As someone else.
Standing at the heart of a great design. Eyes older than her face. Hands shaking over glowing symbols. A voice whispering—
This is the only way.
She tore her hand away.
The pool stilled.
The city stilled.
But Ira did not.
She staggered back, clutching her chest, heart racing against something that felt far too familiar.
"I've been here before," she whispered.
Devansh's gaze locked onto her.
"That is impossible."
She shook her head slowly. "Not like this. But… like someone who never left."
He took a step toward her.
And stopped.
The space between them tightened—not with emotion, but with pressure.
The hum beneath the city deepened.
Somewhere far below, something ancient shifted in its sleep.
"I don't think I'm sick," Ira said quietly.
Devansh searched her face for signs of collapse, hysteria, delusion.
He found none.
"I think," she continued, "that something in me was sealed."
"For what purpose?"
She looked down at her hands.
"I don't know yet."
Then she lifted her eyes to him.
"But this city does."
And for the first time since his curse had been laid upon him, Devansh felt something dangerously close to fear.
Not in his heart.
But in the silence around it.