Tyla’s POV
The realm does not thank us.
If anything, it grows louder.
By dawn, word of the rift has spread beyond the palace walls, beyond the city, beyond anything Arthur’s authority can quietly contain. Messengers arrive breathless and pale, carrying reports that feel less like news and more like symptoms.
Fields where crops refuse to root.
Streams flowing uphill for a few heartbeats before correcting themselves.
Moonlight lingering hours past sunrise, staining the sky with a pearlescent haze that makes people uneasy without knowing why.
The world is learning how to exist without an open wound to bleed into.
And it hurts.
I stand on the palace balcony overlooking the lower city, wrapped in a cloak I don’t remember putting on. Below, people move with cautious purpose—shopkeepers
