The city noticed when nothing happened.
It wasn't a sudden realization, but a slow, creeping discomfort—the kind that settles in when a clock stops ticking in a quiet room. Morning arrived as it always did: stall doors creaking open, patrols falling into their usual rhythms, the low hum of a thousand voices waking up. But beneath the routine, there was a hole where yesterday's friction should have continued.
The man stayed put.
He remained in the shadows beneath the streets, his back against the cold stone. He didn't pace the floor or check the light through the grates. He simply let the hours wash over him, refusing to move until the world above had forgotten why it was looking for him.
The girl didn't push him to speak. She knew that silence was a tool. It forced the people above to start asking their own questions, and questions were far more dangerous than any answer he could have given them.
He could feel the city reacting. It wasn't through a screen or a magical map, but a gut-deep instinct that had sharpened since the temple fell. A guard would linger a few seconds too long at a crossroads. A clerk would squint at a ledger, confused by a gap in the records that didn't make sense. The machine was hesitating. And in a place built on absolute control, hesitation was a crack in the foundation.
"They'll assume it was a fluke," he said, his voice raspy in the stillness. "That the problem solved itself."
The girl tilted her head, watching the dust motes dance in a sliver of light. "For now. People in power love explanations that don't require them to do any extra work."
They let the silence return. Doing nothing was the hardest part; it required a strange kind of faith. You had to trust that if you stood perfectly still, the predators above would eventually get bored and look elsewhere.
By noon, the tension started to bleed away. The city wasn't solving the mystery; it was just burying it under new data. Routine was winning. The urgency was fading because uncertainty is expensive, and the city didn't want to pay the price. He felt the breathing room expand. He let out a breath he'd been holding since dawn.
"Tomorrow is the real test," he said. "Today was just a distraction."
"It always is," she replied, her eyes steady. "Tomorrow is when we find out if they think you were a ghost or a threat."
She was right. If he stayed gone, he was just a memory. If he came back, he was a challenge.
As evening approached, the girl began to move. She set out his gear with a quiet, deliberate focus, her hands smoothing the fabric of a heavy cloak. "You can't go back the way you came."
"I'm not the same person who left," he replied. "I'm not going back to play their games."
She stopped and looked at him for a long moment. "Then don't go out there trying to bait them. Let them trip over themselves."
The thought took root. He realized that if he waited, the city would show its hand. If they started arresting everyone, they were scared. If they acted like nothing had happened, they were arrogant.
"If they tighten the net," he mused, "they're afraid of what I might say. If they do nothing, they're afraid of making me look important."
"And if they just sit and watch?" she asked.
He looked toward the ceiling, as if he could see through the stone to the streets above. "Then they're waiting for me to make a mistake. They think time is on their side."
The air in the cellar felt heavy with the weight of that realization. This wasn't a fight yet; it was a staring contest.
Night fell, and the city's wards flared to life, casting a faint, magical glow that filtered through the grates. The day was over. The absence had been noted. Tomorrow, he would walk back into the light. He wouldn't be following their script anymore. He was going to tear it up and see what they did with the pieces.