I was sitting on the stone floor with my back against the wall when the city made a sound it wasn't supposed to make.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't even clear. It felt like when someone drags a fingernail lightly across fabric. A soft resistance. A sound that shouldn't exist in stone.
I lifted my head.
Devansh did too. He didn't look at me. He looked down the corridor.
"What was that?" Meera whispered.
Before anyone answered, it came again.
Closer.
Not footsteps. Not breathing. Just… friction. As if something was moving without needing space to move through.
My stomach tightened. The heaviness in my chest shifted sharply, trying to orient toward it the way it always did.
And found nothing.
That scared me more than any presence ever had.
Devansh was already on his feet. Rehaan appeared from the side passage, his body tense in a way I hadn't seen before.
"That didn't travel," Rehaan said quietly. "It just… happened."
I stood slowly. The air felt wrong. Not heavy. Thin. Like a room after all the oxygen's been quietly taken out.
"It's not inside the city's pattern," I said. "I can't feel it."
Another sound brushed the corridor.
Right behind Devansh.
The wall beside him shivered.
Not cracked.
Shivered.
Like something had leaned through it and then pulled back.
Meera made a broken sound in her throat.
Devansh turned sharply, scanning empty stone.
"The wall didn't register contact," he said. "Something passed through a place it wasn't allowed to exist."
My skin prickled.
Then the space ahead of us… failed.
That's the only way I can describe it.
The air folded inward. Light bent strangely. The corridor refused to finish forming itself. It was like looking at a reflection that didn't know what it was reflecting.
Something stood there.
Not a body.
A missing shape.
A place where the city had no opinion.
My chest seized.
I couldn't feel fear from it.
I couldn't feel anything.
"I can't read it," I whispered.
Devansh's voice was low. "That is its purpose."
The thing shifted.
Not forward.
Sideways.
And the wall rippled again.
Meera cried out.
My body moved before my thoughts did.
I stepped between her and the distortion.
I didn't reach for it.
I reached for the city.
For the warmth I had felt in the sealed corridor. For the way Vayukshi had begun to respond instead of just preserve.
My palms lifted into the air.
"Vayukshi," I said.
Not loudly.
Honestly.
The heaviness in my chest pulled tight, sharp and burning, like something being dragged through a place it didn't belong.
The city's hum faltered.
Then surged.
The stone beneath my feet warmed suddenly. The walls vibrated, just slightly, like a throat clearing after centuries of silence.
The distortion trembled.
For a second, it blurred.
Not gone.
Confused.
Then the corridor snapped back into itself.
The wall regained depth.
The air thickened.
The place where the thing had been… was only a place again.
Meera slid down the wall, shaking.
My knees gave.
Devansh caught me before I hit the floor.
"That cost you," he said.
I couldn't answer.
My lungs forgot how to take a full breath.
But I knew something worse than the pain.
They had learned something.
And so had the city.