We didn't stop walking, but the city had already changed.
It was still the same place on the surface, still filled with people moving between buildings, still layered with sound and motion that should have felt grounding in its predictability, yet something beneath that rhythm had shifted in a way that made everything feel subtly out of place.
The streets no longer felt neutral, and the spaces between people seemed to carry more meaning than they should have, as if something unseen had begun to weave itself into the structure of the city without disrupting its appearance.
I became aware of it gradually, not through sight but through the quiet insistence of instinct, the same instinct that had once guided me through the forest without question. Only now, instead of pointing toward prey or danger in a familiar environment, it strained against something that did not belong to the natural order I understood.
