The sun came up without a siren to announce it.
It was just a weak, grey light spilling over the walls, hitting a city that had forgotten how to even move without being told. The checkpoints were just empty shells of iron and wire now. The guards had vanished before dawn, probably ditching their uniforms in some alley so they could disappear into the very crowds they'd been arresting since the winter.
Elias stood at the edge of the old district, watching the whole thing fall apart. His head was still ringing from whatever had happened the night before—that strange, forced clarity finally fading out of his system.
People were drifting through the streets like they were walking in their sleep. They'd stop dead at intersections, waiting for a light to change or a guard to bark an order, but nothing happened. They just stared at the burnt-out husk of the Archives. Nobody was cheering. They just looked anxious, like they'd spent so long being caged that the open door looked more like a threat than a gift.
He felt it too—that hollow space where the rules used to be.
For years, everyone had traded their common sense for the safety of a schedule. Now, they were standing exactly where they wanted to be, and half of them looked like they had nowhere to go.
Down in the market, things were starting to stir, but it felt fragile. A guy had set up a folding table with some bread, but he wasn't calling out to people. He was just sitting there, eyes darting around, waiting for a boot to kick his table over.
Elias walked up and grabbed a loaf. He didn't reach for a permit or a ration card. He pulled a silver coin from his pocket—real weight, old world. The vendor took it with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking, looking at the metal like it was a ghost.
"Nobody's here to log the sale," the man muttered, glancing up at the empty towers.
"Then it's just a piece of bread," Elias said. "Take the money."
He walked off, chewing on the crust and watching a couple of guys clearing a pile of bricks from a side street. No foreman, no work orders. They were just doing it because they wanted to get home.
That hum in the back of his mind—the last of the Clarity—gave one final, dying flicker. It didn't feel like a revelation this time; it just felt like the truth. The city wasn't going to fix itself with grand plans. It was going to be built on a million tiny, boring decisions made by people who were scared to death.
He went back down into the hole one last time.
The cellar felt cramped now, like a suit of clothes he'd outgrown. The girl was already packing, shoving her gear into a beat-up leather bag. She looked up at him, and for the first time, her eyes didn't look like they were searching for a way out.
"The air's weird out there," she said.
"It's thinner," Elias said, leaning against the damp stone of the doorway. "You have to actually try to breathe it."
She swung the bag over her shoulder. "So, what now? The Magistrate's in a hole somewhere, and the Oversight is gone. You don't have to play the ghost anymore, Elias."
He looked at his hands. They were stained with soot and grease, but they weren't shaking. He'd spent his life breaking the machine, but he had no interest in being the one to weld the new one together.
"I think I'm going to go somewhere where I don't have to look at a map to know where I am," he said.
She gave him a quick, genuine smile—the kind that didn't hide anything—and headed for the stairs. He watched her go, just another person stepping out into the light.
Elias stayed in the dark for a minute, listening to the silence. He pushed the old, scarred table into the center of the room, leaving it there for the next person who might need a place to hide.
Then he followed her up. He stepped out of the tunnel and into the morning, just another face in the messy, loud, unscripted disaster of a city that was finally, finally awake.