Ira could no longer walk through the city without listening.
It was not voices.
It was undercurrents.
Places where emotion had been compacted into form. Corners where decisions made centuries ago still echoed without sound. Structures that had been built around fear, around hope, around the desperate will to remain.
The city carried all of it.
And now, so did she.
She stood alone on a narrow bridge spanning one of the lower wells, eyes closed, palm resting lightly against the cool stone. The heaviness within her chest stirred—not violently, but attentively.
She wasn't drawing anything in.
She was becoming aware of what was already there.
A faint constriction passed through her, like a ripple of unease.
Someone was thinking of her.
Not from within the city.
From beyond it.
The sensation wasn't a presence. It was a reach. An attempt to understand a distortion in emotional architecture that no longer obeyed expected models.
Her breath slowed.
She focused, the way Devansh had shown her. Not on what she felt, but on how it moved.
The reaching sensation faltered.
Then adjusted.
A whisper of pressure traced along the edges of her awareness, seeking alignment.
Ira opened her eyes.
Rehaan stood at the far end of the bridge, watching her with an expression she could not easily place.
"You're getting clearer," he said.
She lowered her hand. "Clearer how?"
"They're having to work harder to sense you," he replied. "You're no longer broadcasting chaos. You're shaping signal."
Her chest tightened slightly. "And that's good."
"It's necessary," he said. "Good is something we decide later."
He approached slowly, studying her with the same attention he once reserved for the city's unstable zones.
"You felt them just now," he said.
"Yes."
"And you didn't react."
"No."
Rehaan's mouth curved faintly. "That's new."
She leaned lightly against the railing. "You say that like it worries you."
"It interests me," he replied. "Worry implies expectation. I've learned better."
She watched him for a moment. "You didn't come back to Vayukshi just to warn us."
He met her gaze without evasion. "No."
"Then why?"
"For the same reason everyone eventually returns to unfinished things," he said. "To see whether they still own us."
Her fingers tightened on the stone.
"And do they?"
Rehaan glanced toward the deeper city, where ancient structures slept beneath layers of time. "Less than they used to."
A pause.
Then, more quietly, "More than I'd like."
Before she could answer, Devansh's presence entered the space behind her—not with sound, but with that particular shift in the air she had come to recognize.
"You should not be alone on the lower spans yet," he said.
"I wasn't," she replied gently.
His gaze flicked briefly to Rehaan.
Rehaan lifted his hands slightly in surrender. "We were discussing her evolution," he said. "You should be proud."
Devansh's attention returned to Ira. "Pride is not the response this situation requires."
She turned to face him. "What is, then?"
He considered her, really looked at her, as though re-mapping something he had once believed fixed.
"Preparation," he said.
The word carried weight.
And beneath it, something quieter.
Concern.
Ira felt it stir in him.
And this time, she did not carry it.
She let it exist where it belonged.