The first sign was not sound.
It was resistance.
Rehaan felt it at the city's outer edge—a pressure against the invisible boundaries that had held Vayukshi apart from the world.
Something was testing the seams.
He swore quietly and turned back toward the inner city at a run.
Devansh felt it moments later.
A distortion in the city's rhythm. A faint, unfamiliar friction in the silence.
Ira did not need either of them.
The heaviness in her chest surged sharply, then reoriented—like a compass snapping toward north.
She gasped.
"They're here," she whispered.
Devansh's gaze sharpened. "Who?"
"Not physically," she said. "Not yet. But… awareness."
They reached the high eastern rise where the city's hidden boundary thinned.
Beyond it lay desert and ordinary sky.
And something else.
A presence pressed faintly against the air, subtle but deliberate. Not force.
Inquiry.
Rehaan joined them, breath quick.
"They've begun triangulating," he said. "Tracing the shift."
"Who?" Ira asked.
"The Scribes of Ash," he replied. "They don't hunt beings. They hunt phenomena."
The air shimmered faintly before them.
Not open.
Tense.
"They don't know where we are," Rehaan continued. "But they know something impossible just realigned."
Ira's pulse quickened.
"And what do they do when they find impossibility?"
Rehaan's mouth curved humorlessly. "They study it. They contain it. They dismantle it."
A ripple passed through the boundary.
Devansh's posture changed—subtly, but decisively.
"This city was built to isolate," he said. "Not to withstand."
Ira stared at the shimmering air.
The heaviness inside her had already oriented itself toward it.
She lifted her hand.
"Don't," Devansh said sharply.
"I'm not opening it," she replied quietly.
She closed her eyes.
And listened.
Not outward.
Inward.
The heaviness did not surge.
It organized.
She felt faint impressions pressing against the boundary—seeking anchors, resonances, points of recognition.
"They're mapping emotional structures," she murmured. "They don't see places. They see patterns."
Her hand hovered inches from the air.
"If I respond," she said, "they'll find us."
Devansh watched her profile, the calm tension in her posture.
"And if you don't?"
She opened her eyes.
"Then they'll keep searching," she said. "Until they find someone who can't choose not to answer."
Silence fell.
Rehaan studied her carefully. "You're thinking like one of us."
She shook her head slowly.
"No," she said. "I'm thinking like someone who remembers what it's like to be human."
She lowered her hand.
The shimmer receded slightly.
Not gone.
Paused.
The outside presence did not retreat.
It waited.
And for the first time since entering Vayukshi, Ira understood something with chilling clarity.
Her awakening had not only begun a transformation.
It had announced it.
To the world.