Arav didn't collapse immediately.
That came later.
At first, there was only the burn.
A deep, grinding heat running through his legs and spine, as if something had been forced to bear weight it was never meant to carry.
He stayed standing because he didn't trust the ground.
The plaza looked wrong.
Not destroyed — misplaced.
Concrete tiles sat at angles that suggested gravity had hesitated. Streetlights flickered between two intensities and couldn't decide which was real. Sound returned unevenly, voices arriving half a second late, footsteps echoing where no one stepped.
People stared.
No one screamed anymore.
Shock had replaced panic.
Ira reached him first.
"Arav," she said, gripping his arm. "You're bleeding."
He looked down.
Thin lines of blood traced from the backs of his knees, seeping through his trousers.
He hadn't felt it happen.
"That's not good," Tiku said faintly. "Legs are usually… important."
Arav exhaled slowly and nodded once.
"Yes," he said. "They are."
Containment teams finally moved in.
Not rushing.
Not confident.
They cordoned the plaza with too much space, unsure where the damage ended. Portable screens went up — not to block sight, but to create the illusion of separation.
Too late.
People had already filmed everything.
Not just the Gate.
The hesitation.
The moment reality failed to decide.
Inside Arav's head, the system tried to reassert itself.
Carefully.
Gently.
Grounding Feedback: Critical
Structural Stress: Exceeded
Recovery Protocol: Recommended
No commands.
No threats.
Just suggestion.
Arav ignored it.
That hurt more than the grounding had.
They moved him to the edge of the perimeter.
Medical staff hovered, uncertain.
"This isn't in the handbook," one whispered.
Another glanced at Arav's legs, then away. "We should… monitor."
Arav sat heavily.
The moment his weight shifted, pain flared up his spine like a warning siren.
Mooladhara had held.
But it had fractured internally.
Ira knelt in front of him.
"You didn't have to do that," she said.
"Yes," Arav replied quietly. "I did."
"People saw."
"That was the point."
Her jaw tightened.
"And you almost broke yourself."
Arav met her gaze.
"That was also the point."
She swallowed hard.
Around them, the narrative war had already begun.
Authorities spoke calmly to cameras.
"Structural instability."
"Electrical interference."
"No evidence of anomalous activity."
But the footage circulating online told a different story.
The shadows.
The silence.
The collapse.
The system could blur images.
It couldn't blur collective shock.
Arav tried to stand again.
Pain shot through him so sharply he gasped despite himself.
Tiku was there instantly.
"Nope," he said, voice shaking. "You're not doing that. Heroes sit."
"I'm not a hero," Arav muttered.
"That's fine," Tiku said. "Sit like a regular human disaster, then."
Arav almost laughed.
Almost.
That night, they took him somewhere quiet.
Not a hospital.
Not containment.
A space that hadn't decided how to categorize him yet.
Arav lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
The burn in his spine pulsed dully.
Not healing.
Not worsening.
Waiting.
Inside him, something had shifted.
Grounding wasn't infinite.
Stability had a threshold.
And he had crossed it.
Far away, Devavrata Rathod read the damage assessment twice.
"Root overload," the report said. "Partial structural fracture."
Devavrata closed the file.
"He grounded against a collapsing decision," he murmured. "That was never survivable long-term."
He looked out the window.
"We're past containment," he said quietly. "Now comes consequence."
Rudra Dhawan watched the same footage with open satisfaction.
"He chose weight over balance," Rudra said. "Good."
Arav closed his eyes.
For the first time since the fractures began, the ground beneath him felt… uncertain.
And that terrified him more than any Gate ever had.