The deterioration was not immediate.
It was orderly.
Marikka noticed it because Serian stopped reacting to the right things. Not to danger, not to external pressure. But to what should have been neutral. Stable surfaces. Known rhythms. Vibrations that, until the day before, held him anchored like a reference note.
Now they didn't.
The case in her hands returned irregular impulses, as if someone had begun to shift the center without warning. Not continuous pain. Misalignment.
Marikka stopped under a stone arch. The city, here, vibrated less. An old passage, no longer optimized. She leaned her back against the wall and closed her eyes.
Read calmly.
Serian responded with a short tremor, then a void. A clean interruption. Like a sentence broken in half.
Marikka inhaled slowly.
She wrote in the notebook:
WHERE.
No response.
Not because Serian didn't want to.
But because he no longer knew.
The saturation arrived all at once. The city's vibrations, the cult's residues, the market's calculation that still persisted like a mathematical shadow. All systems that had touched Serian without taking responsibility for it.
The refusal had created an operational void.
And the void was eating the echo.
Marikka rested the case against the wall and placed both hands on the leather. Direct contact helped. It didn't solve the problem, but it slowed it down.
Serian reacted with a stronger, disorganized jolt. An impulse that wasn't seeking attention. It was seeking anchorage.
Marikka felt her heart accelerate. Not fear. Urgency.
She wrote, larger than usual:
REMAIN.
For an instant, the echo recomposed itself. A familiar vibration, faint but recognizable. Then the drift again.
Something was rewriting Serian's priorities from the outside.
Not the Athenaeum.
Not the registry.
The market.
The refusal had not canceled the offer. It had made it asymmetric. Someone was trying to extract value without consent, as one does with an unattended resource.
Marikka felt anger rise, but she did not explode. She focused.
She wrote:
WHO IS TOUCHING YOU.
Serian responded with a broken, intermittent vibration. Not a name. A pattern. Linear. Repeated. Calculated.
A reading signal.
Someone was estimating his durability from a distance.
Marikka pushed herself off the wall too quickly. The world reached her with a half-beat delay. A synchronization error that made her lose her balance for a moment.
She got back on her feet, clenching her teeth.
The cost was becoming physical.
She wrote, slow, controlled:
ENOUGH.
She placed her hand on the stone, then on the case, creating a closed circuit. Not a barrier. An interval.
The city reacted badly.
Not with violence. With noise. Overlapping, incoherent vibrations. As if someone had opened too many windows at once.
Serian screamed without sound.
Marikka felt the fracture run through her arms, up to her shoulders. Her way of reading was becoming insufficient. Not because she was weak. Because she had been designed for texts, not for hostile extractions.
She fell to her knees.
The contact with the ground was abrupt, messy. The pain gave her a fixed point.
She wrote, with a trembling hand:
YOU ARE NOT A RESOURCE.
Serian replied with an almost imperceptible echo. Not relief. Recognition.
But something had already broken.
Marikka understood it when she felt a frequency missing. Not an emotion. A part of the vibrational memory. As if a margin had been cut away without leaving a trace.
The loss was not spectacular.
It was definitive.
Marikka remained motionless, her breath short. The city continued to move around her, indifferent, efficient.
When she managed to stand up, Serian was lighter. Not physically. Structurally.
She wrote:
TELL ME WHAT IS MISSING.
No response.
Not because Serian couldn't.
Because what she was asking for no longer existed.
The market had not taken everything.
It had taken enough.
Marikka closed the notebook with a sharp gesture. The vibrations now arrived with a wider delay. Not exhaustion. Collateral damage.
The refusal had come at a price.
Not for her.
For someone who could no longer afford to say no.
And Marikka understood that, from now on, every choice would leave residues.
And those residues would never be neutral.