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Suddenly, someone caught her sleeve. “You.”

A woman she half recognised from the lower copying rooms, her face blotched and eyes wild. “You’re the one. He said your name.”

Maia tried to pull free, but the grip tightened.

“You were with it. One of them. And now—” The sentence broke off into something that wasn’t a word. “What did you do? What did you do to us?”

“I didn’t—”

“My sister is in that line.” The woman let go of her as though Maia had turned hot. “She’s standing in that line because of what you let in. You’re not even from ‘ere and you feel like you speak on our be’alf. Now look what you’ve done.”

She was gone before Maia could answer her. She stood a moment in the moving corridor, with the shape of the woman’s hand still on her sleeve. She took a deep breath in, a deep breath out, wiped her face with the sleeve that the woman had been holding, and carried on walking. Because there was nothing else she could do.

Another woman sat crumpled against the wall near a shuttered stall, sobbing into her own hands, her wares scattered and trodden around her, ignored.

A child stood alone at a junction, crying without sound, until someone scooped him up without breaking stride.

Others stood in small clusters, speaking in low, urgent bursts that got louder and sharper the longer they went unanswered.

“They can’t enforce this—”

“Three days isn’t real—”

“They wouldn’t—”

Maia didn’t slow down. She didn’t have time. She shut out the voice that had started creeping up the back of her neck, the one using the woman’s words. What did you do?

The wardlines were completely gone now, their power redirected entirely to the Fracture. And without them, the city felt more than just exposed.

A man stumbled past her, clutching a bag half-filled with belongings, loose items spilling from the top as he moved. Behind him, a woman called his name, her voice breaking as she tried to follow.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“Away,” he snapped, not turning back.

Maia swallowed.

Away. As if there was anywhere left to go.

***

Outside, the chaos only intensified.

In the square, a line had already formed. People stood in careful rows, silent, waiting. Umbralyn in jet-black armour oversaw them, directing them one by one down a side corridor Maia knew led deeper into the inner sectors.

She knew what the line was, and she understood exactly why they were standing in it. An hour ago a man had been turned into a stain on the floor for spitting, and the people in that line had children who had watched it happen.

She looked for faces she knew and found three. One of the junior copyists, sixteen at most, holding his own elbows for comfort. An old woman she had passed every morning for weeks without ever learning her name.

And the baker from the harbour steps, who had drawn a cloth over his loaves rather than sell one to an Umbralyn, standing third from the front with his hat in his hands.

Not one of them was looking at the Umbralyn. They were all looking at the ground, which was the only thing left in that square that had not already been decided for them.

Maia kept walking. There was neither time nor chance for persuasion, and she was no longer certain she had the right to offer it.

Across from them, another group argued openly, voices raised, eyes wide with fear and fury.

“You think they’ll actually protect you?”