The city didn’t react immediately.
Aryan noticed that before he noticed anything else. No sirens tore through the night. No sudden rush of footsteps or flashing lights broke the rhythm of the street. Traffic lights changed colors with mechanical patience. A group of strangers laughed somewhere nearby, careless and loud. Life moved forward as if nothing inside that abandoned building had almost changed the course of several lives.
That calm unsettled him.
Moments like the one he had just walked away from were supposed to leave marks. The air should have felt heavier. The streets should have felt different, as if they remembered. Instead, the world behaved as though nothing had happened—as though a decision hadn’t stalled mid-breath, unfinished and dangerous.
Aryan pulled his jacket clos
