The city was alive not with noise, but with understanding. Everything breathed purpose. Streets wove together like neural pathways, and buildings pulsed gently, synchronized to the rhythms of the people who passed through them. Orion had never experienced anything like it. There was no separation between thought and motion, between intention and structure.
She walked beside Cole in silence, absorbing.
"They're not just living here," he whispered. "They're becoming it."
They turned a corner and found a central plaza, where multiple beings sat together, exchanging nothing but presence. No words. No gestures. Just the merging of thought.
The feeling in the air wasn't telepathic—it was deeper, like memory without time, or emotion without ego. Orion could feel her thoughts unraveling gently at the edges, as if the place wanted her to loosen her grip on identity.
One of them noticed Orion and stood—a woman whose skin shimmered like mercury and eyes glowed with deep memory.
