The porch was empty, save for the ghost of a footprint and the fading scent of lye and rain. Ananya had not fallen; she had simply drifted. In her state of advanced, neurotoxic delirium, the slamming of the wooden door hadn't felt like a rejection—it had felt like the final click of a camera shutter, capturing the last image of a life she no longer owned. The "Liability" had been deleted, just as Ishaan had shredded her digital childhood with a single, clinical keystroke. With a mechanical, dream-like grace, she had stepped off the concrete ledge and into the waist-deep, churning water of the alleyway. Her body moved not toward safety, nor toward the light of the main road, but toward the deeper shadows of the industrial maze, pulled by a tide only the dying can feel.

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