Night settled differently after that.
The city's hum deepened, then softened, like something that had lost the certainty of its rhythm and was learning a new one.
Ira slept.
Not deeply.
But she slept.
Devansh did not leave.
He stood near the edge of the chamber, attention divided between her stillness and the altered currents in the city's deeper structures.
He felt it now.
Vayukshi was no longer only responding.
It was observing.
Not the way the Scribes did.
Not analytically.
Relationally.
It tracked where Ira walked.
Where she rested.
Where her awareness brushed its deeper layers.
The city had always contained.
Now it oriented.
Devansh turned his gaze inward.
The loss he had felt earlier sharpened.
Whole regions of the city's internal design no longer passed through him with the same immediacy.
He was still connected.
But he was no longer central.
The realization did not frighten him.
It unsettled something far quieter.
Identity.
He moved closer to her resting place.
For centuries, he had stood between Vayukshi and everything else.
Now the city's attention bent toward someone who had never meant to command it.
And somewhere in that shift, he felt himself becoming… adjacent.
Ira stirred faintly.
Her fingers moved, brushing the stone.
The city's hum altered.
Just a fraction.
Devansh felt it respond.
And for the first time, the ancient structure of Vayukshi registered him not as its anchor—
but as someone standing near its center.