Devansh noticed the absence before he understood it.
The city's deeper rhythm had always moved through him without obstruction. A continuous alignment between awareness and structure. He did not have to search for the laws. They had lived inside him.
Now there were moments when he had to pause.
Moments when his attention no longer immediately resolved into certainty.
It happened when he walked alone along the upper spans. A familiar shift in the air failed to register. A deeper current passed without anchoring.
He stopped.
Listened.
The city answered him.
But slower.
With faint imprecision.
Something in him no longer synchronized the way it once had.
He turned back toward the inner halls.
Toward Ira.
She stood near one of the open terraces, watching pale light drift across the distant stone. She had been doing that often lately. Standing without touching. Listening to things he could no longer quite hear.
He approached.
She didn't turn.
"You're losing something," she said quietly.
He stilled.
"Yes," he replied after a moment.
"What is it?"
He considered.
Then spoke with careful honesty.
"The part of me that always knew."
She finally turned to him.
He met her gaze. "There are spaces now. In my awareness. Where instruction used to be."
Her chest tightened.
"And what fills them?" she asked.
He did not answer immediately.
Because the truth was still forming.
"Sometimes," he said slowly, "they remain empty."
Her breath softened.
"And sometimes?"
"Sometimes," he continued, "they fill with… inclination."
She searched his face.
"Toward what?"
He held her gaze.
"Toward you."
The words were not dramatic.
They were simply where his awareness had begun arranging itself.
Silence settled around them.
The city hummed faintly, uneven now, learning new pathways.
"I don't want to take anything from you," she said.
"You are not," he replied. "You are interrupting something that was already eroding."
She shook her head. "It doesn't feel that way."
"It feels," he said quietly, "like emergence."
He lifted his hand, hesitated, then rested it lightly against the stone railing beside her.
Not touching her.
But close enough that she felt the shift in him.
"Immortality," he said, "was the absence of movement. The perfect preservation of what had already failed."
She swallowed.
"And now?"
"Now," he said, "there is direction."
She closed her eyes briefly.
"I don't know where any of this ends."
"Neither do I."
A pause.
Then, softer, "But I am no longer certain it ends where it was designed to."
Above them, one of the distant spires gave a low, unfamiliar sound, as if stone had shifted its weight.
Devansh felt it pass through the city.
Through him.
And into something he was only beginning to understand.