Tyla’s POV
The world learns how to be quiet.
Not all at once. Not gently. Quiet arrives in fragments—missed alarms, unused watchtowers, doors left unlocked because no one remembers why they were ever barred. The kind of silence that feels wrong at first, like a held breath taken too late.
I notice it in the mornings.
The city wakes without urgency now. No horns calling shifts. No bells marking danger. The palace corridors echo in a way they never did before, not because they are empty, but because they are no longer braced for impact.
Arthur hates the quiet at first.
He doesn’t say it outright, but I see it in the way he wakes before dawn, restless, pacing the room like a storm trapped in a bottle. His hands still curl as if expecting a hilt. His shoulders tense at distant sounds tha
