Tyla’s POV
The question I fear most arrives without drama.
No crowd. No crisis. No trembling edge of the Veil.
Just a knock at the door.
Arthur is out early, helping repair a grain lift that never quite worked the way it was designed to. I open the door barefoot, hair loose, half-expecting a neighbor with a mundane request.
Instead, it’s three people I don’t know.
They’re not armed. They’re not hostile. They look… careful. Like people who have rehearsed what they’re about to say and still aren’t sure it’s allowed.
The woman in front speaks first. “We need help,” she says. “And we don’t know who else to ask.”
I feel it then—not a pull, not a command.
A choice.
I step aside. “Come in.”
—
They’re from the outer valley, beyond the regions we rebuilt first. Their land is difficult—t
