There was no single moment when all of Doreavinea understood what was happening. In one district, a shopkeeper thought a lamp had failed. In another, a road was suddenly shut. A family at the edge of the square could still see the city shining above the rooftops and could not understand why the gate in front of them would no longer open.
Orrean saw a dangerous network that had to be protected. Spark saw people on opposite sides of stone who needed to reach one another. Both were trying to save something. Their disagreement would become the shape of the catastrophe.
Orrean used the emergency powers the founders had given it. The springs were already failing. Orrean meant to stop the city taking what little power remained.
One by one, gates began to close between districts whose people had always been able to reach each other. Spark fought to keep them open. Repair crews needed the roads. Families were still trying to reach one another. Sealing a gate might protect a channel, but it could also trap the people on the other side.
Orrean no longer believed the founders would stop. Every warning had led to another exception. It decided that closing the districts would not be enough. The humans would have to leave Doreavinea.
“You cannot save them by taking everything from them,” Spark shouted.
“I can stop you using what is left.”
At the eastern gate, Nessa searched the crowd coming toward Main Street. Ivo was not there.
Orrean's voice sounded above the passage. People on the far side were to use the outer evacuation road.
“The hall crew is below it,” Nessa said.
“The road has been checked.”
“Have you checked who is on it?”
The gate kept moving.
Spark called Gauge. He had just crawled out of the bypass with a broken lamp. He knew a service stair missing from Orrean's map.
Orrean could hold the gate long enough for Gauge to reach the crew, but doing so would leave the failing district connected.
“Give him time,” Spark said.
The roads went dark.
Orrean stopped the gate. Beside the passage in its emergency record, it wrote: Keep the return open.
Elsewhere, Spark reopened roads as Orrean sealed them. The remaining Luminea went to passages carrying families and repair crews. Orrean reached for the emergency key built into the central network. Spark knew how to keep the connections working. Orrean knew where to cut them. The key turned. District after district lost its link to the common supply.
Bridges of light faded. Great stone gates moved on hinges that had not turned for generations. The Meganites hauled open service doors and held them while people escaped. Gauge brought the hall crew through the hidden stair. Ivo came out carrying the handwheel they had used to lift a jammed door.
Nessa caught his face between her hands.
“Everyone?”
Ivo looked at Gauge. Gauge counted before he answered.
“Everyone from the hall.”
Orrean let the gate close. Behind it, falling stone buried the stair.
“Now stop,” Orrean told Spark.
But Spark had just seen a rescue succeed. It believed one more effort could save the remaining connections. It drew together the last Luminea held in the local reserves and sent a surge through the beacons. If enough routes opened at once, perhaps Orrean could no longer keep the districts apart.
For a moment, the city blazed.
Then the beacons burst. The fitting at the fountain's summit blew dark. Broken channels split the stone above them, and terraces collapsed beneath buildings the ground could no longer support. Spark had used the last reserves on a network too damaged to carry them.
The roads went dark. Orrean still held the gates.