Ira woke before light reached the upper spans.
For a moment, she did not know where she was. The Hall of Still Waters lay quiet around her, its pale stone softened by low drifting light, the air cool against her skin. Then the memory of the sealed corridor returned, followed by the sensation that had not left her even in sleep.
Exposure.
Not pain.
Not weakness.
A thinning.
She pressed her palm lightly to her chest. The heaviness remained, but it no longer felt contained within familiar edges. Something that once buffered her awareness had shifted, leaving her more open to the subtle movements beneath everything. The city's deeper rhythm brushed her senses without the usual distance, and she had to slow her breath to keep from becoming overwhelmed by it.
She sat up carefully.
Across the chamber, Devansh stood where he had been for hours, though his posture had softened, as though he were no longer entirely braced against the world. He turned the moment she moved.
"You're awake," he said.
"Yes."
Her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
She drew her knees toward her chest, grounding herself in the simple pressure of her body. "Something's different," she said after a moment. "I don't think it's just fatigue."
Devansh approached and knelt near her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that she felt the subtle shift his presence always brought. "You altered a foundational alignment," he said. "The city did not release you from that engagement. It incorporated it."
Ira's gaze drifted toward the shallow water at the center of the hall. "It feels like I can't step back the way I used to," she said. "As if the space between me and everything else has narrowed."
He considered her quietly. "That space was never as wide as you believed."
She looked up at him.
"For most of your life," he continued, "you survived by absorbing what you could not escape. In Vayukshi, you learned to redirect what you once carried. What you did yesterday went further. You placed yourself into a decision the city was still holding."
Her breath deepened. "So now it doesn't know how to place me back outside it."
"No."
She let that settle.
She did not feel triumphant.
She felt… situated.
And the realization unsettled her more than any fear.
"When I try to rest," she said quietly, "it feels like something is still watching."
Devansh's gaze sharpened slightly. "The city is."
She almost smiled at that. "I know. But I don't think that's all."
She closed her eyes and listened.
The city's presence was familiar now, layered and resonant. Beneath it, faint but unmistakable, lay another awareness. Not external. Not the Scribes.
A quieter current that had begun to form within the city itself.
"It's like something is… learning me," she murmured.
Devansh's jaw tightened.
"That learning is not neutral," he said.
"I didn't think it would be."
Silence grew between them, the kind that did not ask to be filled. The city's hum shifted faintly, then steadied, as though it had completed some small internal realignment.
After a time, Ira pushed herself to her feet.
"I need to see Meera."