Emberveil City breathed.
Heat shimmered faintly above the stone roads, flame-veins beneath the streets keeping the air warm even in the early morning. Mana-lamps hovered at regular intervals, their glow steady and disciplined, never flickering unless commanded.
Arav walked between his parents, his steps small but steady.
Isha skipped ahead, her laughter trailing behind her like a ribbon of sound. A thin ribbon of water followed her movements, rising and falling in playful arcs before collapsing back into nothing.
The city felt different from the estate.
Louder. Denser.
Not in noise—but in presence.
Arav felt it immediately.
Invisible threads overlapped the streets, crossing and bending without touching. Aether moved here with purpose, shaped by thousands of lives pressing against it every day.
He slowed.
Sharanya noticed at once. "Arav?"
"I'm listening," he said quietly.
A merchant laughed nearby as enchanted cloth unfurled itself across a stall. Somewhere, metal rang against stone. A child ran past them, chasing a floating paper charm shaped like a flamebird.
Then—
A pear slipped from a stall.
It rolled once.
Twice.
And fell.
Arav reached out without thinking.
Reality bent.
The pear froze in mid-air.
Not stopped.
Suspended.
Shadows skewed sideways, light warping as if it had forgotten how to travel straight. For a single breathless moment, the market stalled—not silent, but wrong.
Isha gasped. "Bhaiya… the world blinked."
Arav snapped his hand back.
The pear dropped, bursting softly against the stone.
Sound rushed back in.
Laughter. Footsteps. Bargaining.
No one noticed.
No one—
Sharanya's fingers closed firmly around Arav's wrist.
"We're leaving," she said softly.
There was no panic in her voice.
Only certainty.
They moved through the market without haste, yet the space ahead of them parted subtly, as if Emberveil itself made room. Arav's heart pounded as they passed beneath an archway etched with flame sigils.
"What did I do?" he asked quietly.
Sharanya did not answer at once.
"Something you are not ready to repeat," she said finally.
They did not return to the market.
Instead, they turned toward a quieter quarter of the city, where stone buildings stood wider apart and the air thinned. Only when they reached a small shrine—old, worn smooth by time—did Sharanya release his wrist.
She knelt in front of him, eyes level with his.
"Arav," she said gently, "when something unusual happens, you do not reach for it again."
He nodded.
"I understand."
She searched his face, then exhaled slowly.
Behind them, Emberveil continued as it always had.
Vendors called out prices. Mana-lamps hummed. Children laughed.
But the aether where the pear had fallen did not settle.
It twisted.
Adjusted.
And remembered.