We didn't move for a long time.
No one suggested it.
Meera sat on the floor, arms wrapped tight around herself. Rehaan stood a few steps away, staring at the wall like he expected it to betray him again.
Devansh helped me sit against the stone.
Everything felt too close to the surface. My skin. My heartbeat. The city's quiet movement under the floor. I pressed my palms into my thighs just to feel something solid.
"It wasn't a being," Rehaan said finally. "It was a condition."
Devansh nodded. "A probe. Designed to exist where our systems cannot register it."
I swallowed. My throat hurt.
"They're not trying to enter," I said. "They're building things the city can't hold."
Silence followed.
The heaviness inside me no longer sat like a weight.
It felt… disturbed.
As if something that used to support it had been removed.
"What did you do?" Meera asked softly.
I closed my eyes.
"I didn't push it away," I said. "I made the city notice itself again. I forced it to take responsibility for a space it had been ignoring."
"And?" Rehaan asked.
"And I don't think I can do that many times."
Devansh's voice was quiet. "You altered how the city references you."
I looked at him. "Meaning?"
"Meaning," he said, "you are no longer only someone it responds to. You are part of what it checks against."
That settled into me with cold clarity.
When I tried to pull back inside myself, there was no familiar edge to retreat behind.
Something had moved.
And it hadn't returned.
"I lost something," I said.
Devansh waited.
"The distance," I whispered. "The part of me that stayed untouched."
No one argued.
Somewhere deep in Vayukshi, stone shifted with a sound that felt too deliberate.
"They know now," Rehaan said.
"Yes," Devansh replied.
"They know you can interfere."
"Yes."
"And next time," Rehaan said, "they won't send something you can confuse."
My stomach twisted.
They wouldn't send a test.
They would send a solution.