The room Devansh brought her to had no walls.
It was a vast circular platform suspended over nothing, its edges dissolving into mist that glowed faintly with the same dark metal veins that ran through Vayukshi. Above them, the sky churned with slow-moving clouds that did not belong to any weather.
"This is where laws loosen," Devansh said. "Where the city listens instead of enforces."
Ira stepped forward carefully.
The moment her foot touched the stone, the platform pulsed.
Not light.
Recognition.
Her chest tightened—not painfully, but like something bracing itself.
Rehaan watched from the entrance arch.
"Try not to bring the city down," he said dryly. "We're quite fond of standing."
Ira almost smiled.
Almost.
She closed her eyes.
This time, she didn't reach outward.
She listened inward.
The heaviness inside her shifted when she focused—not like a weight, but like a gathering.
A presence.
A system waiting for instruction.
She lifted her hand.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted.
Devansh's voice was low. "Neither did we. That was the first mistake."
She inhaled slowly.
And chose.
She imagined the city not as a place—but as something breathing without lungs. Something held together by silent agreements.
Show me what you are holding, she thought.
The air vibrated.
Stone beneath her palm warmed.
Then—movement.
Not physical.
Conceptual.
The mist around the platform began to spiral inward, shaping itself into faint, luminous threads. Symbols emerged—familiar, yet different. Not the fixed spirals of Vayukshi.
These were unfinished.
Alive.
Rehaan's posture changed.
"Devansh," he murmured, "that's not memory."
Devansh's gaze never left Ira. "No."
The threads bent toward her.
And for the first time, Ira did not collapse.
She did not drown.
She stood.
The weight in her chest opened—not spilling, not fading—but rearranging.
The threads shuddered.
Then aligned.
The platform steadied.
The mist stilled.
The city's hum deepened—not louder, but… warmer.
Ira gasped sharply and stumbled back a step.
Devansh was there instantly, catching her arm.
The contact hit her differently now.
She felt his centuries of stillness.
But she also felt something else.
A flaw.
A tension in the architecture of what he was.
"I didn't absorb it," she whispered. "I didn't carry it."
Her breath trembled.
"I moved it."
Rehaan exhaled slowly.
"That," he said, "was the first time I've ever seen Vayukshi obey."
The city answered with a low, resonant pulse.
Somewhere far beneath them, something ancient shifted in its sleep.