The first thing Vayukshi forgot was a corridor.
Ira noticed it while walking one of the lower spans, following a route Devansh had taken her through more than once. The archway should have opened into a narrow passage that curved gently toward the western wells.
Instead, it opened into stone.
Smooth. Unbroken. Unmarked.
She stopped.
Her pulse did not quicken, but something in her chest tilted.
"Devansh," she called softly.
He was a few paces behind her. He came to her side and looked where she was looking.
The corridor was gone.
He did not speak immediately.
He reached out, placing his palm against the wall where an opening had always been.
The stone offered no resistance.
No memory.
"It was here," Ira said.
"Yes," he replied. "It was."
She closed her eyes, letting her awareness drift, not outward, but into the subtle layers she was learning to perceive.
She felt the city hesitate.
Not collapse.
Hesitate.
As though searching for an agreement it could no longer locate.
"It hasn't vanished," she murmured. "It's… misplaced."
Rehaan joined them moments later, gaze narrowing as he took in the blank wall.
"Well," he said quietly, "that's new."
"What does it mean?" Ira asked.
"It means," he answered, "that the city is beginning to misfile itself."
Devansh's jaw tightened. "The deeper laws are destabilizing."
Ira turned to him. "Because of what you did."
"Yes."
"And because of what I'm becoming."
He met her eyes. "Yes."
The admission hung between them without blame.
She lifted her hand, hovering it a few inches from the stone.
"May I try something?"
Devansh nodded once.
Ira closed her eyes and focused—not on what was missing, but on the faint impression of where the passage had once led. On the emotional residue of movement, of turning, of leaving one space and arriving in another.
She didn't pull.
She invited.
The heaviness in her chest shifted, spreading into something like orientation.
The stone beneath her fingers warmed faintly.
Then—slowly, like a memory being recalled—the surface rippled.
Lines appeared.
Not cracks.
Contours.
The archway did not fully return.
But a faint outline emerged, glowing gently against the smooth wall.
A suggestion.
A direction.
Ira stepped back, breath unsteady.
Devansh watched the glowing trace. "You didn't restore it."
"No," she said. "I reminded it."
Rehaan exhaled softly. "That might be worse."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because memory can be rewritten," he replied. "Structure usually can't."
Devansh's gaze remained on the faintly glowing outline.
"The city is beginning to listen to you," he said.
Ira's chest tightened.
"I never wanted it to."
"And yet," he said quietly, "it does."
Above them, somewhere far beyond sight, stone shifted with a sound too deep to echo.