Control rarely disappears outright.
It lingers.
After the consolidation proposal stalled, the council retreated into procedural caution. Meetings continued. Statements were issued. Timelines extended. Everything appeared functional on the surface, yet momentum had thinned to something brittle. The city sensed it, even if it could not yet articulate what had changed.
The absence of resolution became its own presence.
Aria felt it in the way conversations drifted rather than concluded. In the pauses that stretched longer than politeness required. In the questions people stopped asking aloud because they had learned the answers would arrive incomplete.
This was not disengagement.
It was calibration.
Marcelo noticed it first in the data. "Participation has not declined," he reported during a morning briefing. "It has redistributed."
"Meaning," Luca asked.
"Fewer large assemblies," Marcelo replied. "More localized coordination. Smaller groups. Stronger internal coherence."
