Tyla’s POV
The nights change first.
Not dramatically—no tearing skies or screaming rifts—but subtly, in the way silence gathers where it didn’t before. Moonlight no longer presses down like a command. It drapes instead, softer, uncertain, as if the sky itself is learning restraint.
I wake before dawn with the sense of being needed.
Arthur is already awake beside me, propped on one elbow, watching the window where pale light seeps through the curtains.
“You felt it too,” I murmur.
He nods. “The Veil isn’t reacting anymore.”
I sit up, the sheets sliding down my shoulders. “It’s… waiting.”
That unsettles me more than any monster ever did.
We dress quietly. No armor. No ceremonial blades. Just leather and cloth and the Mark glowing steady at my collarbone like a promise I’m still lear
