Blame did not arrive as anger.
It arrived as accounting.
Elyon noticed it in the way people started remembering yesterday more clearly than today. They compared without saying they were comparing. Their eyes lingered on small failures longer than before. Not panicked. Measuring.
At the water station, the tap hesitated.
Just a second too long.
Elyon felt it pull at him like a loose thread. He focused, breathing slow, grounding himself the way he had learned to do. The sound beneath hearing shifted, stretched—
The tap steadied.
At the same time, a window cracked somewhere behind him.
The sound was sharp. Final.
People turned.
Not toward the window.
Toward Elyon.
"That didn't happen before," a man said.
"It did," another replied, but without conviction.
Elyon sat down hard against the wall, heart pounding. The hum beneath hearing settled again, heavier than it should have been.
He hadn't refused.
He hadn't ignored it.
He had acted—and something else had paid the price.
By midmorning, the zone felt different.
Not broken.
Watched.
People lingered near unstable objects longer than necessary. They waited to see what would happen. When something steadied, they nodded. When something slipped, they frowned.
No one shouted.
That made it worse.
A door near the edge of the painted line rattled. Elyon felt it too late. He stood carefully, controlling his breath, moving with precision.
The door stopped.
Across the street, a light flickered and shattered.
Glass spilled onto the pavement.
A guard stepped forward automatically, then paused. He looked from the broken light to Elyon, then back to his tablet.
"That's the third offset today," the guard muttered.
"Offset?" Elyon asked.
The guard hesitated. "One failure resolving by creating another."
Elyon felt something cold slide through his chest.
So it wasn't just leaking.
It was trading.
At noon, the first open argument broke out.
Two residents stood near the board, voices low but sharp enough to carry.
"It was smoother yesterday," one said.
"He didn't miss anything yesterday," the other replied.
"That's not true," the first snapped. "He was just faster."
The word faster hung in the air like an accusation.
Elyon turned away, but he didn't leave. Leaving caused worse problems now.
A child stood nearby, watching him openly.
"You're slower," the child said, not cruelly. Just stating it.
Elyon nodded. "Yes."
"My mom says slow things break," the child added.
Elyon had no answer for that.
The hum beneath hearing wavered again. He lowered himself to the ground, pressing his palms flat against the concrete.
The wavering stopped.
The child blinked, confused, then ran off.
Elyon stayed where he was.
The afternoon passed with small, sharp failures that did not fully stop. A signal stuttered twice before correcting. A lift paused between floors longer than expected. Someone slipped and scraped a hand.
Nothing catastrophic.
But nothing clean.
People noticed the pattern forming.
They started tracking it.
Someone had written new chalk beneath the board.
YESTERDAY — STABLE
TODAY — VARIABLE
Elyon stared at the words until they blurred.
A man erased part of it, then stopped halfway.
"We should keep it," someone said.
"So we know," another replied.
"So we know what?" a third voice asked.
"When it stops working."
Stops working.
Elyon walked away before they saw him listening.
He reached the edge of the zone and stood still. Beyond the faded lines, the rest of the city moved smoothly. Lights timed correctly. Doors opened without hesitation. People walked without watching the ground.
Here, things hesitated.
He stepped one foot closer to the boundary.
The hum beneath hearing pulled tight.
A distant alarm chirped once and died.
Elyon stepped back.
The hum loosened.
Someone watching nodded. "See? It still reacts."
"But slower," another voice replied.
That word followed him all evening.
Slower.
As the light faded, a small group gathered near the steps. Not guards. Not officials.
Residents.
People who had rearranged their lives around the calm.
"We can't rely on something that degrades," a woman said.
"It's not his fault," someone replied.
"Fault doesn't stop injuries," another voice cut in.
No one looked at Elyon.
That was deliberate.
He sat close enough to hear every word and said nothing.
Mara arrived just before dark and stopped at the edge of the painted line.
"They're not angry," she said quietly.
"What are they then?" Elyon asked.
She thought for a moment. "Disappointed."
That word hurt more than blame.
"They expected stability," she continued. "They got used to it."
"I was never meant to be permanent," Elyon said.
Mara shook her head slowly. "Nothing that helps people is ever allowed to stay temporary."
The hum beneath hearing thinned again. A crack spread across a high window and stopped halfway, ugly and unresolved.
No one rushed to fix it.
They were watching Elyon instead.
Night fell unevenly.
The zone still held, but not cleanly. Like a structure with hairline fractures no one wanted to inspect too closely.
Elyon lay back against the wall and stared at the sky. Stars flickered, some disappearing for seconds before returning.
He understood the danger now.
Blame had found its crack.
And blame does not explode.
It seeps.
It spreads quietly, comparing yesterday to today, measuring worth against outcome, searching for alternatives.
The city had accepted him when he worked.
It would not forgive him for wearing down.
As the hum wavered again, Elyon realized something cold and final:
When a solution begins to fail, people do not ask how to save it.
They ask what comes next.
And soon, that question would stop being whispered.