Tyla’s POV
Time begins to behave strangely.
Not faster. Not slower.
Looser.
Days stop stacking like walls and start spreading like cloth—overlapping, folding into one another, defined less by crisis and more by texture. A good meal. A hard conversation. Rain arriving when it should.
I stop counting weeks.
The city does not.
Someone still tracks seasons. Someone still records yields and births and deaths. But the numbers no longer feel like a verdict. They feel like information—useful, imperfect, alive.
I hadn’t realized how heavy inevitability was until it left.
—
Arthur grows quieter.
Not withdrawn. Not sad.
Settled.
He hums now when he works—soft, tuneless sounds that surprise him as much as they do me. He keeps tools in his pockets instead of weapons. His hands bear new mar
