The city didn't feel it at first.
That was how every disaster started.
A fluctuation passed through the grid at 6:42 p.m.—logged as a voltage irregularity, automatically corrected, immediately forgotten.
Except the correction didn't complete.
Something stalled.
Something caught.
Arav felt it like a knot pulling tight inside his spine.
Not pressure.
Not fear.
Misalignment.
He stopped mid-step outside the transit hub.
"No," he said softly. "That's not suppression."
Ira looked at him sharply. "What is it?"
"A Gate," Arav replied. "Trying to open and failing."
Tiku blinked. "That sounds… worse."
"It is," Arav said. "Because Gates aren't meant to hesitate."
The air above the plaza shimmered.
Not visibly—not yet.
But sound distorted first. Conversations dragged, syllables overlapping themselves, like audio played at the wrong speed.
A child laughed too long.
A woman froze mid-step, foot hovering inches above the ground before snapping down again.
People noticed.
Phones came out.
The frame began to slip.
Arav felt the grounding instinct rise automatically.
Mooladhara.
Anchor.
Stabilize.
Hold.
He tried.
The response didn't arrive cleanly.
It came fragmented—lagged, jittered—like a signal passing through broken relays.
His knees buckled slightly.
"That's new," he muttered.
Ira grabbed his arm. "Arav?"
"The Gate isn't opening," he said. "It's oscillating."
Then the shadow appeared.
Not a creature.
Not an entity.
A negative outline, pressed into the air like something had been removed and left a hole behind.
It pulsed—once, twice—trying to decide which side of reality it belonged to.
People screamed.
Not because they understood.
Because instinct recognized wrong.
The system reacted instantly.
Too instantly.
Gate Event Detected
Status: Unstable
Containment Priority: Maximum
The plaza lights shut down.
Emergency shutters dropped.
Announcements blared conflicting instructions.
Suppress.
Evacuate.
Hold position.
The system was arguing with itself.
Arav stepped forward.
Ira shouted after him. "You're visible!"
"I know," he said.
This time, he didn't hide.
Didn't wait.
Didn't ground gently.
He committed.
The grounding surged up his spine—raw, unfiltered.
Pain lanced through his legs.
The plaza cracked.
Literally.
Hairline fractures spread across the concrete as the oscillation spiked.
The Gate screamed.
Not audibly.
Conceptually.
For a heartbeat, reality tore.
The shadow inverted—light bending inward, sound collapsing into silence.
People fell to their knees.
Phones dropped.
The air went thin.
And then—
It snapped shut.
Not cleanly.
Not safely.
The Gate collapsed inward, leaving behind scorched geometry burned into the air like an afterimage.
The plaza didn't return to normal.
It stayed… skewed.
Silence followed.
Not relief.
Shock.
People stared at the space where something had almost been.
They had seen it.
No framing could unsee it.
Sirens arrived late.
Containment teams hesitated.
There was nothing left to suppress.
Only damage.
Only witnesses.
Inside Arav's head, the system updated—slow, uncertain.
Gate Failure Confirmed
Containment Outcome: Inconclusive
Public Exposure: Irreversible
Arav stood shaking, breath ragged.
Grounding burned through him—too much, too fast.
Mooladhara had held.
But barely.
Ira reached him, eyes wide.
"That wasn't… supposed to happen," she whispered.
"No," Arav said. "That was the cost of restriction."
Tiku stared at the fractured plaza. "So… what now?"
Arav looked at the scorched air, at the people filming openly, at the authorities frozen between response and denial.
"Now," he said quietly, "they can't pretend this is manageable."
High above the city, Devavrata Rathod closed his eyes.
"Gate failure," he murmured. "Public."
That had never happened before.
Rudra Dhawan laughed aloud.
"Oh," he said, delighted. "It finally broke the right way."
And somewhere between perception and memory, something watched the fracture stabilize—
Not with concern.
But with anticipation.