Two hundred and forty years after the redistribution, Aurelia City had grown into a place that no longer needed to declare its importance. The towers still rose, but they did so quietly, softened by generations of living green. The river moved through the heart of the city with the same steady patience it had always shown. People lived, worked, studied, and aged without the old urgency that once defined the skyline. What remained was a slower, more deliberate kind of life.Victor Kane was two hundred and twenty years old.His world had become very small. The large chair by the window. The soft blanket across his legs. The indoor tree whose canopy filled the room with shifting patterns of light. The notebook that stayed within reach. The closed wooden box on the dresser. These were the boundaries of his days, and he no longer felt the need to push beyond them.On this particular morning, the light was pale and clean. It entered through the leaves of the indoor tree and settled across t