I didn't realize how tightly I was holding onto Devansh until my hands started to hurt.
My fingers were twisted into the fabric at his side, as if some part of me believed that if I loosened my grip, something inside my chest would follow. I forced myself to breathe slower. In. Out. The stone beneath us was cool. The air was thin. His heartbeat stayed steady against my shoulder.
That steadiness was the only thing in the room that didn't feel like it might change.
The presence inside me hadn't grown.
It hadn't faded.
It had… settled.
Not comfortably.
But deliberately.
I could feel it when I shifted my weight. A subtle internal resistance, like a foreign object pressing back when I moved. It didn't hurt. It didn't speak. It didn't react to emotion.
It simply existed.
And my body, for all its adaptability, had not agreed to it yet.
"Ira."
Devansh's voice was close, lower than usual.
I tilted my head slightly so I could see him.
His eyes were fixed on my face, searching with a focus that had nothing to do with the city now. He wasn't listening outward. He was watching me.
"Your breathing keeps stopping," he said.
I hadn't noticed.
I forced a longer inhale. My chest protested faintly.
"It feels strange to breathe around it," I admitted. "Like my lungs have to… negotiate."
His jaw tightened.
He shifted, not pulling away, but adjusting so that I was more fully supported against him. His arm moved higher across my back, warm and solid. The simple pressure grounded me in a way nothing else had since the corridor.
The room felt different when he moved like that.
Smaller.
Safer.
Meera had gone quiet across from us. She was sitting on the stone platform with her hands in her lap, staring at the floor as though she expected it to answer her. Rehaan stood near the archway, arms folded, watching the corridor with the kind of attention that said he didn't trust stillness anymore.
"I can't feel the thin places," Meera said suddenly.
Her voice was soft, but it cut cleanly through the room.
I lifted my head. "At all?"
She shook her head. "It's like someone turned the lights off. Everything looks normal again. I touch the walls and they're just walls."
A strange ache rose in me.
Not relief.
Loss.
She had been frightened by what she could see, but that sight had been her warning system. Her way of knowing where the city bent.
"And how does that feel?" I asked.
She hesitated. "Lonely."
The word sat between us, heavier than it should have.
Devansh's arm tightened slightly.
I closed my eyes.
The presence inside me stirred faintly at the sound of her voice. Not in response to emotion. In response to location. To proximity.
It knew where she was.
That terrified me.
"I think it took what I was seeing," Meera continued. "Or maybe… it moved it. Like when you pour water from one glass into another and the first one looks empty but the water still exists."
My breath caught.
I knew she was right.
The thing the Scribes had designed had not vanished.
It had relocated.
And now it was inside a system it had never been meant to occupy.
Me.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly.
Meera looked up. "For what?"
"For being the place it landed."
She studied my face. "You didn't choose to be that."
"No," I said. "But I chose not to let it be you."
Something softened in her expression.
She nodded once. "Then I'm glad it was you."
I didn't know how to carry that.
The city shifted faintly beneath us, a slow internal movement like something resettling its weight. The hum wavered, then steadied again.
Devansh felt it. I felt him feel it.
His focus turned inward for a moment, then back to me.
"It is not only inside you," he said quietly.
My stomach tightened. "What do you mean?"
"It is not contained," he replied. "It is… interfacing."
"With what?"
"With the city," he said. "And with me."
My breath stuttered.
"What does that mean?"
"It means," he said carefully, "that something in my awareness is no longer solely mine."
The words sent a chill through me.
"You feel it too?" I asked.
"Yes."
I shifted, turning more fully toward him. Our faces were close. Close enough that I could see the faint change in his pupils as he focused. Close enough that the space between us felt deliberate.
"Where?" I asked.
He hesitated.
Then, slowly, he lifted one hand and rested it over the left side of his chest.
"Here," he said.
The place where he had once told me there was nothing.
A wave of emotion rose in me before I could stop it.
Shock.
Fear.
Something dangerously close to wonder.
I lifted my own hand without thinking and pressed it lightly over his, feeling the warmth beneath his palm, the steady rhythm under his skin.
His breath changed.
Just slightly.
The presence inside me reacted.
Not violently.
Curiously.
The pressure shifted, like something adjusting its internal coordinates.
I froze.
Devansh felt it.
His fingers flexed under mine.
"What did it do?" he asked quietly.
"It noticed you," I whispered.
Silence stretched.
Not empty.
Attentive.
"I don't think it understands emotion," I continued. "But it understands… orientation. And you're part of mine."
His gaze held mine.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then, carefully, he slid his hand from beneath mine and brought it up to my face. His knuckles brushed my cheek, tentative at first, as though he were unsure what permission felt like.
The contact was gentle.
Human.
My breath caught.
The city's hum softened, almost imperceptibly.
Devansh's thumb rested along my jaw. "If something inside you is learning how to remain," he said, "then it will learn from what surrounds it."
My chest tightened.
"And you're worried about what it will learn from you?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I am aware of what it will learn from the city."
His thumb moved slightly, a small, unconscious stroke that sent a strange warmth through my ribs.
"And from me," he added.
I swallowed.
"So am I."
He didn't pull away.
He didn't close the distance further either.
He stayed.
Right there.
Close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath. Close enough that the choice mattered.
"Ira," he said quietly, "if the Scribes have lost track of their construct, they will not stop. They will redirect every resource they possess toward locating its new anchor."
Me.
"And when they do," he continued, "they will not come to test."
"They'll come to retrieve," I whispered.
"Yes."
The word felt like a door closing somewhere far away.
I rested my forehead lightly against his shoulder.
Just for a moment.
The contact steadied something in me that had been shaking since the corridor.
"I don't know how long I can carry this," I admitted. "Whatever it is."
He shifted slightly, angling his body so that I was more securely within the space of his arm.
"Then we will not measure this in how long you can carry it," he said. "We will measure it in how well we respond to it."
I let out a breath that almost laughed.
"That sounds like something you'd tell the city."
"Yes," he replied.
"Are you telling me," I asked softly, "or are you telling yourself?"
His answer came without hesitation.
"Yes."
The simplicity of it undid something in me.
I closed my eyes.
The presence inside me remained.
The danger remained.
The unknown waited.
But so did he.
And for the first time since the Scribes' shadow had touched Vayukshi, I didn't feel like a location.
I felt like a person someone was choosing to stay beside.
Somewhere beyond the city's hidden boundaries, something vast and ordered continued narrowing its search.
And somewhere deep within the city, pathways realigned around a center that was no longer singular.
Inside my chest, something unfamiliar and unfeeling adjusted its position.
Learning.
Waiting.