The restriction didn't feel like pressure.
That was the problem.
Arav noticed it when he tried to do something simple.
A grounding breath.
A quiet scan.
The instinctive reach for stability he'd relied on since the beginning.
Nothing stopped him.
Nothing resisted.
But the feedback came late — delayed, muted, distorted.
Like speaking into a room that absorbed sound instead of echoing it back.
He opened his eyes slowly.
"That's new," he murmured.
They were sitting in the old reading hall — not the main library, but the neglected wing students used when they didn't want to be noticed.
Tiku was stretched across two chairs, scrolling.
"So," he said, "on a scale of one to existential nightmare, how bad is it?"
Arav considered.
"It's not blocking me," he said. "It's desynchronizing me."
Ira stiffened. "Meaning?"
"Meaning I can still act," Arav replied. "But the consequences won't line up in time."
That was worse than suppression.
The alert came mid-afternoon.
Not a location.
A delay report.
Public transit stalled at an interchange — no breakdown, no accident. Just a halt.
People waiting.
Tempers rising.
Heat building.
A textbook pressure pocket.
Ira looked at Arav. "You're cleared?"
"No," he said.
Tiku sat up. "And you're going anyway."
"Yes."
Arav didn't intervene directly.
He stood at the edge of the platform, close enough to feel the pressure — farther than he'd ever allowed himself before.
The grounding came slowly this time.
Uneven.
He placed his hand against the railing.
The pressure resisted — not violently, but off-rhythm.
Arav adjusted.
Too late.
The response rippled outward, shallow and imprecise.
The crowd calmed — briefly.
Then a woman snapped at someone behind her.
A shout followed.
Security moved in faster than expected.
Containment arrived before escalation.
Efficient.
But the pressure didn't disperse.
It slipped sideways.
Into places Arav couldn't see.
His chest tightened.
Inside his head, the system logged the outcome with surgical neutrality.
Restricted Intervention Recorded
Stability Achieved: Localized
Residual Redistribution: Active
Arav stepped back, pulse steady but cold.
They weren't stopping him.
They were using him as a diffuser.
Ira saw it in his face. "What did they do?"
"They let me act," Arav said. "So they wouldn't have to."
That night, he tried again — privately.
A controlled test.
He grounded in silence, far from crowds, far from sensors.
The response lagged.
Then snapped back — too sharp.
Pain flared briefly behind his eyes.
Not damage.
Warning.
The restriction wasn't about denial.
It was about misalignment.
"You can still touch things," Arav said quietly to the dark.
"But they won't land where you expect."
Somewhere deep, the system pulsed once.
Present.
Watching.
Adjusted.
Ira sat beside him on the steps outside.
"They've turned you into a buffer," she said.
"Yes."
"And buffers break first."
Arav nodded.
"That's the point."
He looked out at the campus — calm, orderly, unaware.
"They don't want me gone," he continued. "They want me useful."
Tiku frowned. "I liked it better when they just wanted you invisible."
"So did I," Arav said.
Inside him, something shifted — not power, not awareness.
Resolve.
If restriction meant misalignment…
Then alignment had to be reclaimed manually.
Not by force.
Not by permission.
By understanding the gap.
And choosing where to stand when it widened.