Glora didn't change overnight.
It never did.
The same cracked sidewalks. The same vendors arguing over coins. The same low hum beneath everything, like the city was breathing through clenched teeth. If anyone was watching, they would have said nothing had shifted.
But Waza felt it.
Not in the Vein. Not yet.
In himself.
He stood at the edge of Daven Street just before dusk, hands in his pockets, eyes moving without hurry. This was the version of him the city knew best. Quiet. Watching. A shadow with a reputation that never spoke for itself.
Normally, he would have stayed that way.
Normally, he would have observed and moved on.
Across the street, a boy no older than sixteen was being pressed against a metal shutter. Three men. Not a gang, not officially. Independent operators. The kind that fed off desperation and called it business.
Waza noted the details automatically.
One carried a short blade but didn't know how to use it.
One talked too much.
The third watched the crowd instead of the victim.
Money exchange. Debt leverage. Familiar pattern.
He should have kept walking.
That was the rule he'd lived by. See everything. Touch nothing.
Selene stood beside him, close enough that he could feel her presence without looking. She hadn't spoken since they arrived, but he could sense her attention shift the moment the boy stumbled and dropped his bag.
Coins scattered. A small sound. Loud enough.
Selene glanced at Waza, not asking. Just watching.
He felt it then.
The pressure.
Not fear. Not anger.
A tightening, like a line being drawn inside his chest.
If he walked away now, nothing would change.
If he interfered, everything would.
One of the men laughed and kicked the bag aside. The boy didn't fight back. He just stood there, shoulders tense, eyes hollow in that way Glora taught people early.
Waza exhaled.
And stepped off the curb.
The sound of his footsteps was ordinary. No dramatic entrance. No warning. Just movement where there had been stillness.
The man with the blade turned first. "Move along."
Waza didn't stop walking. "Let him go."
The words surprised him. Not because he said them, but because he meant them.
The second man scoffed. "Who do you think you are?"
Waza stopped close enough now to see the dried sweat on the boy's neck, the tremor in his hands.
"I'm not buying anything," Waza said calmly. "And I'm not joining."
The third man's eyes narrowed. Recognition flickered. Not certainty, but rumor.
"You're that one," he said slowly. "The quiet one."
Waza met his gaze. "No deal," he said. "No debt. No future trouble."
The man hesitated. That was enough.
Waza stepped forward, just one step, claiming space that wasn't offered.
The hum stirred. Soft. A warning, not a weapon.
The man with the blade felt it. His grip faltered for half a second. That half second was everything.
"Walk," Waza said to the boy.
The boy didn't wait to be told twice.
When it was over, there was no fight. No display. Just three men backing away, recalculating costs that no longer favored them.
Selene hadn't moved the entire time.
When they turned the corner, she finally spoke. "You crossed it."
"Yes," Waza said.
"The line."
"I know."
She studied him, eyes sharp, reflective. "You didn't have to."
"I chose to."
That was new.
They walked in silence for a while. The city pressed in around them again, pretending nothing had happened. But Waza felt the aftershock. Not adrenaline. Not pride.
Consequence.
The Vein didn't surge. It didn't reward him.
It settled.
As if something in the city had taken note.
Selene stopped near an old transit sign, rusted and half torn down. "You're preparing to leave," she said, not as a question.
Waza looked at the map etched into the metal. District lines. Roads leading out. Names he hadn't memorized yet.
"Yes."
"Why now?"
"Because staying passive won't protect anything anymore," he said. "Not me. Not Glora."
She tilted her head slightly. A mirror, seeing something form before it had a name. "You refused safety," she said. "You claimed responsibility. And you interfered."
Waza nodded once. "And it cost me."
"What?"
"An exit," he replied. "Glora won't let me fade quietly now."
Selene smiled faintly. Not warmth. Recognition. "Then you'll need to decide what you take with you."
Waza looked down the road, where the city thinned and the lights changed color.
"I already have," he said.
And for the first time since the silence began, Waza wasn't just listening to the city.
He was answering it.