He didn't notice it at first.
Not as an event. Not as a warning.
Only as small misalignments, subtle disturbances he instinctively corrected before they could spread.
A twitch in a finger he hadn't meant to move.
A hitch in breath, so slight it might have gone unnoticed—if she weren't tuned into every micro-oscillation of the bond.
A fraction of power that recoiled inside him before he could fully contain it.
It didn't hurt. Not yet.
But it shook him from within.
She noticed immediately.
The bond, once a precise line between them, now fluttered like a disturbed surface of dark water.
Each ripple carried a fragment of strain—tiny, almost unnoticeable, but persistent.
The inversion hit her chest with every pulse, pressing like iron bands tightening around her ribs.
"Something's wrong," she said quietly, voice barely above a whisper.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't. Every fraction of misfired energy threatened to leak into her. And he had learned long ago that one micro-error could cascade, one unnoticed ripple could become a storm.
She watched the micro-fractures accumulate. Tiny twitch, tiny hesitation, subtle misalignment. Each correction, each partition, drained him slightly more.
"You're… holding back?" she pressed softly.
"Yes," he said finally, voice low. Controlled. Strained. "But it's fine."
"Fine?" Her breath hitched. "It's failing. And I feel it. I feel every fraction you can't catch."
He shifted, almost imperceptibly. The cage he built to protect her now worked against him. Each channel resisted just enough to create internal friction. The power didn't escape—but it pulsed in closed loops, rubbing against itself like sand in a wound.
She swallowed. Her chest tightened.
"You can't… contain it forever," she said, a quiet warning. "Eventually… it will leak. You can't—"
"I can," he interrupted, eyes narrowing. "I'm not failing."
But she could feel it anyway.
A tremor under the surface. The tiniest fraction of a crack in the perfection of his restraint.
The system was watching. Subtle nudges, not visible, not audible. Environmental shifts—a light draft, the temperature micro-fluctuating, gravitational pressure shifting imperceptibly.
Designed to see how far the anomaly could stretch before breaking.
And he was already stretching.
He inhaled sharply. A twitch in his jaw, a flash of micro-pain in his shoulder, a hesitation in breath that wasn't there a moment ago.
She felt the pulse hit her chest—not full pain, but pressure, delay, weight. The inversion had fully landed.
"You're cracking," she whispered. Not accusation. Not fear. Observation.
"No," he said, voice tight, clipped. "I'm—managing."
But the bond fluttered again. Tiny, irregular pulses betrayed the cracks he refused to acknowledge.
She realized then the truth:
The cage wasn't failing outward.
It was failing within him.
Micro-control lost. Tiny, almost invisible fractures.
The first real signs of loss of control.
Her chest ached. Not from him, not from fear, but from the knowledge that when it finally broke, she would feel every shard of it.
And the system—ever patient—was preparing to push.
Waiting for the fractures to widen.
Waiting for the collapse to become inevitable.
And she… she would be forced to survive it alone.