They returned to the sealed corridor at dusk.
Light moved differently there now. It lingered against the stone instead of sliding away, as though the surface were holding warmth the way skin does after touch.
Meera stood a little behind Ira, arms folded around herself. She had stopped asking questions. Something in her had turned inward, listening to things she didn't yet understand.
Ira stepped forward.
The space before the wall felt… attentive.
She didn't reach immediately.
She let her breath settle. Let the heaviness in her chest arrange itself. It no longer surged when she approached these places. It took shape.
"I'm here," she said softly.
The air tightened.
Not resistance.
Recognition.
Her fingers brushed the stone.
A faint current moved beneath the surface, like something waking from stillness.
She closed her eyes.
The city met her awareness not as a whole, but in layers. Old alignments. Preserved fears. Decisions that had once been made and then allowed to become permanent.
She didn't look for an opening.
She looked for tension.
Where the city was holding itself too tightly.
She felt it then—a narrow band of emotional density woven through the sealed path. A place where preservation had tipped into refusal.
Her chest constricted faintly as she aligned with it.
Her palm pressed flat.
The stone cooled.
Then warmed.
The air thickened.
Devansh felt it ripple through the deeper city. Not like fracture. Like strain.
Something ancient shifted its weight.
Meera inhaled sharply behind her.
"I can feel it," she whispered.
Ira didn't turn.
She leaned.
Not with force.
With presence.
The heaviness inside her focused, spreading into a steady pressure through her ribs and shoulders.
Her breath shook once.
Then steadied.
The surface beneath her hand trembled—not visibly, but in sensation. Like something pressing back against a decision that had outlived its purpose.
Her knees weakened slightly.
Devansh stepped closer.
She didn't fall.
But she felt the cost.
A sharp pull radiated through her chest, down her arms, into her fingertips.
The city did not yield.
It adjusted.
A faint line of warmth spread beneath her palm.
Not a crack.
A softening.
She pulled her hand back slowly.
The wall remained.
But it no longer felt sealed.
It felt… held.
"I didn't open it," she said quietly.
Devansh studied the stone.
"No," he agreed. "You changed how it stays closed."
Somewhere within Vayukshi, a long-silent current began to move.