By nightfall, the city stopped pretending.
It did not announce anything. No screens flashed. No rules were posted. But something old and quiet broke, and everyone felt it at once.
People stopped helping strangers.
Elyon saw it happen in small ways first.
A man tripped on the steps outside a transit gate. He did not fall hard. Just enough to need a hand. Two people looked at him. One stepped back. The other checked the gate timer like it mattered more.
No one touched him until Elyon moved.
The moment Elyon took a step forward, the gate buzzed. Not locked. Just impatient. The people nearby stiffened.
"Don't," someone whispered.
Elyon stopped.
The man on the ground pushed himself up alone. His face was red. Not from pain. From shame.
He would remember that.
Elyon walked away with his jaw tight.
By the time he reached the lower districts, the pattern had spread.
People watched him like weather. Not anger. Calculation. They tracked distance. They measured outcomes.
If he stood still, things slowed.
If he moved, something nearby failed.
If he helped, the cost landed somewhere else.
No one said it out loud.
That made it worse.
At the corner market, an argument erupted over water credits. A woman screamed that her account was clean. The vendor kept shaking his head, repeating the same words like they were safe.
"System adjusted. I can't override."
Elyon stood across the street.
The vendor's screen flickered.
The water credit returned.
The woman laughed in relief.
Then the screen blinked again.
Two other accounts vanished.
The laughter died.
The vendor looked up, eyes wide. "Get him away from here," he said. "Please."
Elyon backed up.
The street exhaled.
Someone near the wall muttered, "That's it. That's the rule."
Another answered, "Yeah. Distance."
Elyon kept walking.
The sound beneath hearing stayed constant now. No spikes. No dips. Like a low current running through his bones.
It felt wrong.
It felt stable.
That terrified him more than the pain ever had.
He reached an old pedestrian bridge that crossed a narrow service canal. He used to come here when the city felt too loud. Tonight, it was crowded.
Not with people crossing.
With people waiting.
They stood on either side of the bridge, leaving the center empty.
A man at the edge raised his hand when Elyon approached.
"Stop there," the man said.
"I'm just crossing," Elyon replied.
The man swallowed. "We know."
A woman behind him spoke up. "Last time you crossed near the transit hub, three gates froze."
"That wasn't—" Elyon began.
"We know," she said again. Her voice shook. "But it happened."
Elyon looked at the bridge. It was old. Rusted. Patched too many times.
He stepped onto it anyway.
The metal creaked.
Too loud.
The canal water stuttered beneath him. Ripples ran backward, then corrected themselves.
Someone gasped.
Elyon froze mid-step.
The pressure brushed him, gentle as a warning.
He stepped back off the bridge.
The creaking stopped.
The water smoothed.
A man laughed nervously. "See? It listens."
"No," someone else said. "It avoids."
Elyon turned away.
Behind him, the crowd slowly filled the bridge again. Not together. One by one. Testing.
The first rule had been broken.
People were no longer asking why things happened.
They were learning how to move around him.
That night, he did not go back to his building.
He slept under a broken awning near the old rail yard. The ground was cold. His body did not care.
He dreamed without images.
Just motion.
Waking and not waking. Standing and not standing. Presence stretching thin, then snapping back.
When he woke, a child was watching him.
The child did not look afraid.
That was new.
"You're the bend," the child said.
Elyon sat up slowly. "What?"
"My dad says when you're close, stuff goes weird," the child continued. "But when you leave, it gets worse somewhere else."
Elyon felt something sink in his chest.
"That's not how it works," he said.
The child shrugged. "That's what he said."
"Where is your dad?" Elyon asked.
The child pointed. A man stood near a rail post, arms crossed, eyes hard.
"He told me not to talk to you," the child added. "But I wanted to see."
"See what?" Elyon asked.
The child tilted his head. "If you're real."
The sound beneath hearing shifted.
Not louder.
Focused.
Elyon stood.
The child's eyes widened, not in fear, but awe. That scared Elyon more than hatred ever could.
"Go back to your dad," Elyon said softly.
The child ran.
The man did not thank him.
Elyon walked until the rail yard ended and the city thinned. The edges felt softer. Less watched.
That was when he noticed it.
His shadow was wrong.
Not missing.
Delayed.
It followed him a fraction of a second late, like it had to decide first.
He stopped.
The shadow stopped after him.
He raised his hand.
The shadow lagged. Then copied.
Elyon's breath caught.
This was not the system.
This was not punishment.
This was consequence.
The city had adapted.
And now his own presence was no longer fully synchronized with itself.
Somewhere deep in the city, something logged quietly.
Not a warning.
Not an alert.
A confirmation.
The first rule had been broken.
And the second one was forming.
Elyon stood alone at the edge of the rail yard, watching his shadow hesitate before obeying him.
For the first time, he wondered if leaving would even fix anything.
Because the city was no longer reacting to his choices.
It was reorganizing around his existence.