Arthur’s POV
The last chapter does not arrive with certainty.
It arrives with repetition.
I wake before dawn, not because I am needed, not because something has gone wrong, but because my body has learned a different rhythm and refuses to sleep past it. The city outside the window is quiet in the way only a lived-in place can be—not empty, not tense, simply resting between choices.
I lie there for a while, listening.
No alarms.
No distant argument sharpening into urgency.
No sense of a problem waiting to discover me.
Just breath. Stone cooling. A cart rattling far away, early and unconcerned.
For the first time, the absence of responsibility does not feel like space I should fill.
It feels earned.
Tyla sleeps beside me, turned toward the window, one hand curled loosely as if she
