Meera slept in the Hall of Still Waters.
Not deeply.
Not peacefully.
But she slept.
Ira sat a short distance away, back against one of the cool stone columns, watching the slow rise and fall of the girl's chest. Devansh stood near the edge of the chamber, attention stretched outward through layers of the city. Rehaan paced, restless, like someone waiting for weather.
"She shouldn't be here," Rehaan said quietly.
"I know," Ira replied.
"She won't last long if the city starts reconfiguring again."
"I know."
Rehaan stopped pacing and looked at her. "Knowing doesn't move her out."
Ira closed her eyes for a moment.
The heaviness in her chest felt different when she focused on Meera. It didn't pull. It didn't flood. It… oriented. Like something aligning around a fragile center.
"We'll take her back," Ira said. "The same way I came in."
Devansh turned. "That way no longer exists."
She met his gaze. "Then we'll make one."
They moved at first light.
Devansh led them toward one of the older exit corridors—paths once used to gently displace wanderers before they crossed too far. The air grew thinner the closer they came, the stone marked with older symbols, less rigid, less final.
Meera walked between Ira and Rehaan, quiet, eyes darting.
"Is this place alive?" she whispered.
Ira considered the question. "I think it remembers being alive."
They reached the arch.
Or where it should have been.
The passage curved forward… and dissolved into a wall of pale, unmoving stone.
Devansh stopped.
His hand lifted slightly, then fell.
"It has closed," he said.
"Closed how?" Rehaan asked.
Devansh's jaw tightened. "Decided."
Ira stepped forward.
She didn't touch the stone.
She stood before it and listened.
The city's deeper rhythm reached her—not sound, but intention. There was no hostility in it.
There was… correction.
"It's not blocking us," Ira murmured. "It's… preserving itself."
Rehaan's voice hardened. "By trapping a human?"
Ira's chest tightened.
The heaviness stirred.
Not to break.
To answer.
She raised her hand slowly and placed her palm flat against the stone.
The city did not ripple this time.
It held.
A dense, steady presence met her awareness.
She felt the layers of Vayukshi press gently back—systems aligning, ancient priorities resurfacing.
Contain the anomaly.
Stabilize the deviation.
Close the open path.
Her breath caught.
"She's not a threat," Ira whispered.
The stone remained unchanged.
Devansh watched her closely. "It is not judging her," he said. "It is responding to you."
The truth of that struck deep.
The city wasn't keeping Meera in.
It was closing around Ira.
She withdrew her hand.
Slowly.
The stone did not change.
For the first time since arriving in Vayukshi, Ira felt something like helplessness rise.
Not panic.
The quiet, hollow kind.
"I can't make it open," she said.
Devansh stepped closer.
"You are still learning," he said. "The city does not yield its oldest agreements easily."
Meera's voice trembled. "I don't want to disappear here."
Ira turned to her immediately. She knelt, placing her hands gently over Meera's.
"You won't," she said. "I promise."
She felt the weight of that promise settle.
And somewhere deep beneath the city, something ancient shifted in response.