The chamber didn't wait.
The moment I spoke, the fracture responded.
The space inside it thickened, drawing inward like a lung filling with something heavier than air. Pale structures assembled rapidly within the tear, folding into a taller, more defined shape. Patterns sharpened. Angles aligned. The presence of the Scribe condensed into something that felt closer to a body.
The pressure on my awareness intensified.
Meera cried out.
I turned just in time to see her sink to her knees, both hands pressed to the floor as if she were trying to hold the city still.
"I can't stop seeing it," she said, her voice shaking. "Not one future. Many. They're overlapping."
A faint glow gathered around her fingers, thin lines tracing across the stone beneath her palms.
Asha swore softly.
"She's synchronizing," she said. "The city is using her emotional field to test projections."
Devansh moved toward Meera, but the space between them… bent.
Not visibly.
Functionally.
His step didn't land where it should have.
The city failed to meet him.
He staggered, catching himself on a column, his breath breaking sharply.
My heart slammed.
"Devansh!"
He lifted his head slowly.
Something in his eyes had changed.
The faint city-light that had always reflected there was brighter now. Deeper. As if layers beneath his gaze were becoming visible.
"I can feel sections of myself reattaching," he said quietly. "Architectures that were dormant. Closed. I am… larger than I remember being."
The words carried weight.
Not pride.
Shock.
The chamber trembled again.
The Scribe advanced.
With each movement, the fracture widened, and structured force spilled outward, compressing the chamber's air into sharp, almost crystalline currents. Columns groaned. The illuminated seams flared violently.
"Correction will proceed," the presence declared. "Primary relational convergence will be neutralized."
One of the Chiranjiv stepped forward.
The tall one whose body carried luminous fractures.
He raised his hand.
The city answered him.
A curved plane of dense light rose from the floor between us and the fracture, vibrating with internal motion.
The Scribe struck it.
The impact didn't sound.
It… reorganized.
The plane shuddered, then collapsed inward, light breaking into spinning fragments that embedded themselves in the stone.
The force of it threw the Chiranjiv backward.
He hit the ground hard.
Didn't rise.
Asha moved instantly, kneeling beside him, her hands glowing faintly as she pressed them to his chest.
The city convulsed.
Pain rippled through the chamber.
Not human pain.
Structural.
My breath hitched.
And something inside me answered it.
The presence surged upward, flooding my awareness.
Suddenly, the chamber vanished.
I was somewhere else.
Again.
But this time, it didn't feel like a memory being shown.
It felt like one being opened.
I stood in a vast, half-formed city.
Light flowed through raw frameworks like liquid thought. Structures assembled, paused, dismantled themselves, then reassembled differently.
And at the center of it—
Saanvi.
She stood upright now.
Older than the image I'd seen before.
Stronger.
Her palms glowed as she walked, and wherever she stepped, the city subtly altered its internal geometry.
She stopped.
She turned.
And looked directly at me.
"You found the core," she said.
Her voice was inside my head.
Inside my chest.
Inside the pressure that now lived there.
"You're real," I whispered.
She smiled faintly. "I was. You are."
The city behind her shuddered.
"The Chiranjiv believed the city needed to be stabilized," she said. "The Scribes believed it needed to be closed. I believed it needed to be allowed."
Allowed to what?" I asked.
Her expression softened.
"To fail. To adapt. To surprise itself."
The vision darkened.
I felt her pain then.
Not as memory.
As echo.
The tearing sensation.
The separation.
The loneliness of being reduced to a function.
"They removed me from the network," she said quietly. "They embedded what I carried into the foundations. They made the city safe."
Her gaze sharpened.
"And dead."
The presence inside me responded to her words, resonating like a struck chord.
"You're not here by accident," she said. "You are not recurrence. You are continuation."
The chamber rushed back.
Sound crashed into existence.
Meera screamed.
The Scribe had moved again.
One of its extended structures had pierced the space beside her, embedding itself into the stone. The floor around her hand lit violently, symbols spiraling outward.
She cried out, arching as light raced along her arm.
Devansh reached her this time.
The city did not bend him away.
It parted.
He knelt, gripping her shoulders.
"Look at me," he said. "Stay here."
Her eyes were wild.
"I see you dying," she sobbed. "I see Ira breaking the city open. I see something wearing her shape. I can't tell which ones are real."
I dropped to my knees beside her.
I took her hands.
The presence inside me surged.
The city responded.
The illuminated seams along the chamber floor flowed toward us like rivers of light.
The Scribe reacted instantly.
Structured force lashed outward.
Asha shouted something I didn't understand.
Another Chiranjiv stepped forward.
And then—
he turned.
Not toward the Scribe.
Toward the fracture behind us.
My blood ran cold.
"What are you doing?" Asha demanded.
His markings flickered unevenly.
"Ending it," he said.
He extended his hand.
Not at the Scribe.
At the city.
At the core.
At me.
The light beneath his feet flared violently.
The chamber screamed.
And I understood.
Some of them didn't want the city to evolve.
They wanted it sealed forever.
The betrayal split the chamber like a second fracture.
The presence inside me surged, fierce and sudden.
And Devansh's voice cut through everything.
"Ira," he said.
Not as warning.
As recognition.
I lifted my head.
And for the first time since the anomaly entered me, I didn't feel like something was happening to me.
I felt like something was happening through me.
The city leaned.
The light gathered.
The memory of Saanvi burned bright behind my eyes.
The Scribe advanced.
The traitor acted.
Meera cried out.
Devansh's grip tightened around my arm.
And something in the core, something vast and unfinished, finally chose to wake.