I started to notice it when I moved.
Not in some dramatic way. Not like power or pain. It was smaller than that. Stranger. The way the city's air didn't part the same way when I passed. The way sound shifted before I reached a corridor instead of after. As if something ahead of me was already preparing.
The first time it happened, I thought I imagined it.
I stood alone on one of the inner terraces, watching pale light slide down the slanted stone. I took a step forward, and the air… changed. A faint tension rippled outward, barely visible, barely audible, like heat rising off ground before rain.
I stopped.
The tension faded.
I stepped again.
It returned.
My stomach tightened.
I wasn't affecting the city.
Something was announcing me.
I drew a slow breath and pressed my palm lightly against my chest. The pressure inside me answered. Not emotionally. Structurally. The way a door resists before opening.
Devansh felt it from across the terrace. I saw his head lift sharply, his attention snapping toward me.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Walking," I said.
I took another step.
The city responded before my foot finished moving.
Stone didn't shift. Light didn't flare.
But something aligned.
The space in front of me subtly deepened, as if the city were pre-clearing its own path.
Devansh crossed the distance quickly, stopping just in front of me. He didn't touch me. He studied the space around me.
"You are no longer opaque," he said quietly.
I frowned. "Opaque to what?"
"To the city's deeper structure," he replied. "It is registering you before you arrive."
A chill moved through me.
I turned in a slow circle.
Everywhere I faced, the faint tension followed. Not dramatic. But present.
Like the city had learned my outline.
I whispered, "It's mapping me."
"Yes," he said.
"And the thing inside me?" I asked.
He didn't look away. "It is participating."
The word landed hard.
I lowered myself onto the edge of the terrace, suddenly needing to sit. The stone felt warmer here. I wondered if it always had.
"When you said it was interfacing," I murmured, "you didn't mean symbolically."
"No," he said.
I looked up at him. "You meant physically."
"Yes."
The air between us felt charged now, thin with something neither of us named.
Meera appeared at the far side of the terrace, moving cautiously. She had started doing that, as if her body still expected the city to thin beneath her hands.
She stopped when she saw us.
"I felt that," she said.
My heart sank. "Felt what?"
"You," she replied. "Like a… shift. The way you used to feel when the walls were thin."
Devansh's jaw tightened.
She walked closer. Slower than usual.
"When you moved," she said, "something moved with you. But it didn't feel like the city."
She hesitated. "It felt… quieter."
I closed my eyes.
The presence inside me stirred faintly at the sound of her voice.
"I don't want to be a signal," I said softly.
Devansh's voice was steady. "You are not a signal. You are a reference."
The words didn't comfort me.
They frightened me more deeply than anything else so far.
Because signals can be ignored.
References reshape systems.
"I need to know what it can do," I said. "Before they figure it out first."
Devansh studied me. "That knowledge will not arrive safely."
"I don't need safe," I replied. "I need real."
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "There is a place beneath the lowest alignments. A structural core that even the Scribes never fully mapped."
My gaze sharpened. "Why?"
"Because it does not resolve," he said. "It is where the city's early contradictions were stored instead of eliminated."
Something about that description made the presence inside me shift.
A subtle, internal lean.
"And you think whatever is inside me will react there," I said.
"Yes," he replied. "And so will you."
The way he said it made my pulse quicken.
"Come with me," I said immediately.
He didn't hesitate.
Meera did. "Ira…"
I turned to her.
Her eyes were worried. "Every time you go deeper, something changes."
I met her gaze. "I know."
She swallowed. "And it always seems to change you."
I looked down at my hands. They didn't look different.
They didn't feel like mine anymore either.
"I don't think staying still is protecting me," I said.
She nodded slowly. "Then don't go alone."
Devansh turned to her. "You cannot enter the lower core."
"I'm not asking to," she replied. "I'm asking to be nearby. In case you don't come back the same."
The words settled heavily.
Devansh looked at me.
Not at the city.
At me.
"Whatever occurs," he said quietly, "will be irreversible."
I let out a slow breath.
"So was letting it stay."
His gaze softened.
He lifted his hand, hesitated, then rested it lightly at the back of my neck. The contact was brief. Warm. Human.
Not examination.
Not control.
Presence.
My eyes closed for a moment before I meant them to.
"Then let's go where it tells the truth," I said.
The city's hum deepened faintly.
Somewhere far below, something long-contained shifted in anticipation.
And far beyond the city, something vast and deliberate narrowed its search.
Because whatever had vanished from its design space was no longer missing.
It was moving.