The city did not break.
That was the problem.
Cassian Vale had built his forecasts on fracture, on panic spirals, market implosions, territorial skirmishes erupting like open sores once Dante's centralized grip loosened. He had expected screams in the data.
Fires in the streets.
Power scrambling to replace power.
Instead, the city adapted.
Not loudly.
Not heroically.
It adjusted the way living things did when the environment changed, slow, subtle, unnerving.
Cassian stood alone in the uppermost level of the Spire, hands clasped behind his back, gazing through floor-to-ceiling glass at the city stretched beneath him. Dawn painted the skyline in washed-out golds and silvers, the kind of light that made everything look deceptively clean.
Behind him, the room murmured with intelligence.
