The city did not slow down for me, nor did it pause long enough to acknowledge that I had entered it without a destination, without a plan, and without any certainty about what would come next. It moved with a steady, almost indifferent rhythm, carrying people forward in ways that seemed effortless to them but entirely foreign to me.
And yet, despite how easily I blended into the crowd, I could not shake the feeling that something had changed.
I was no longer invisible.
Not completely.
Not in the way I had been before.
I walked for a long time without choosing a direction, letting the streets unfold in front of me while my thoughts struggled to keep pace with everything that had happened over the past day. The conversation with Lucien lingered more than I expected, not because of what he had revealed, but because of what he had deliberately left unsaid.
There had been gaps in his answers.
Spaces where clarity should have existed.
