It's weird, the way hope sneaks up on you. The door didn't swing open the way doors do in stories—it groaned, protesting, like even it couldn't believe we'd actually made it. My hand slipped on the rusted handle. For a second I thought maybe we'd be stuck there forever, circling the dark, but then—like it got bored of fighting—it just gave up.
And there was light.
Not the thin, mean glow we'd seen in cracks between metal. I mean real light, warm and thick on my face, making me blink so hard my eyes watered. For one messy second I forgot how it felt to breathe, because the air out here was sweet, full of grass and dirt and… something sharp and alive. Delhi sunlight, wild and tough, pressing into all the shadows the Tower left behind.
Liora landed next to me, couldn't keep standing, just sort of folded like a stack of worn-out clothes. She put her hands on her face and murmured something I couldn't hear. Maybe it was "thank you," maybe it was "finally," maybe both. I knew exactly how she felt.
The girl held onto Liora's sleeve with her tiny, white-knuckled hand. She looked around with this stunned kind of awe—the kind you feel when you get out of a train station at the right stop after thinking you'd missed it, except it's your life.
The old man stretched out in the grass. I heard him mumble, "Blue sky. Didn't think I'd see a blue sky again." For a second he stared between the clouds like he wanted to argue with them, but he just closed his eyes and let the sun soak in.
We all just sat there. Quiet. I poked my fingers in the dirt to prove it was real—it was cool, damp, so stubbornly alive that I wanted to laugh. So I did, and it came out half-cry, half-cough, awkward and wonderful.
People walked past on the far road, going places, groceries tucked in cloth bags, kids nagging for sweets, a rickshaw rattling over potholes. Some people saw us. Most? Just kept moving, and that felt fair.
The Tower was only a few steps behind us but already felt far away, like something bad from a dream that's hard to explain. Nobody looked at us like heroes or monsters. Just four lost people who finally found sunlight, and that suited me fine.
"You think it's safe, here?" the girl asked. Her voice was so small, she could've been talking to the grass.
Liora wiped her face, all tough again and tired too. "It's never safe. It's just… right now, it's good enough."
She wasn't wrong. My ribs hadn't stopped aching, and every sound out here wanted to make me flinch—a car horn, a vendor's sharp call, the slam of a door somewhere. But I smelled bread baking. That smell… man, it about broke me. Real life, simple and solid. I'd been hungry for it all along.
The old man grunted. "If anyone asks, I say we just tell 'em the truth. That we climbed out, and the Tower can wait till it gets bored."
Nobody argued.
We shuffled down a side lane—slow, careful, like our bodies were learning to move again. I kept glancing at the busy road, feeling every stare stick a little, but no one said anything.
We found a chai stand, mostly shady, and sat on a busted brick wall. Liora bought us each a glass—not fancy, just sweet and hot, tea that burned my tongue and spread warmth to the inside of my bones.
The girl sipped slow. "Feels like we borrowed this moment from someone else."
I smiled, for real. "Maybe. But they're not getting it back."
The old man coughed but managed half a grin. Liora stretched her legs out and leaned her head back, savoring the sun and the cheap tea, breathing like she could finally fill her lungs. We didn't talk about going back. We didn't talk about what came next. Felt too big, too far away.
We just drank our chai, let the honking and shouting and city dust settle around us, didn't ask for more than this: sunlight, company, a plastic glass of steaming tea, and air that wasn't trying to choke us.
If anyone, anywhere, ever asked me what freedom feels like, I'd tell them about this: feet in the dirt, sun on my back, friends close, a city moving on. For now, for a little while, all I had to do was breathe. And that's what I did. That's what we all did—too human to be anything but alive.
To be continued...