บททั้งหมดของ THE SUBSTITUTE MATE FOR THE ALPHA KING: บทที่ 171 - บทที่ 180

The discovery of "time-stains" added a new, bizarre layer to our custodial duties. For a week, it was all we talked about.“Theoretical framework,” Kairi announced one morning, covering our kitchen table with diagrams of spirals and knots. “If the Cataclysm was a multidimensional rupture, it wouldn't just fracture space. It would shear duration. These loops are like… temporal splinters. Tiny moments that got too much psychic charge and popped loose from the timeline.”I stared at a drawing that looked like a confused pretzel. “So we’re not fixing time. We’re pulling out its emotional slivers?”“Essentially, yes.”“Great. Do we need tweezers made of starlight, or will my whittling knife do?&

The calm after the temporal re-stitching was profound. The air itself felt different—not just stable, but rich, layered with the echoes of the resilient memories we’d woven back into the fabric of the land. The village bell, though physically silent, seemed to hum with a quiet pride. The blacksmith’s hammer rang with a new, confident tone. We’d done good work. Hard work.Naturally, we celebrated the only way we knew how: with pedantic arguments.“The ley-line confluence is demonstrably more harmonious,” Kairi insisted, pointing at a chart of local energy flows he’d inscribed in the dirt of our garden. “A 17.3% reduction in chaotic fluctuations since we anchored the bell-memory. The data is clear.”“The data,” I said, not looking up from my latest whittling project (a lopsided owl), “is you drawing squiggles in the mud. Maybe people are just in a better mood because it hasn’t rained for three days.”“Correlation is not causation, Sze!”“And your squiggles are not data, Kairi!”Maia, st

The Conductor’s baton completed its downstroke.Nothing happened.No blast of silent energy. No wave of obliteration. The silent snow continued to fall, muting the world, but the figure itself seemed… still. Waiting.Kairi and I stood frozen, braced for an end that didn't come. The tension was a wire stretched to snapping.Then, from the edge of the woods, a blur of charcoal and rust launched itself with a soundless snarl. Karn. Not at the Conductor. At me.His milky eye was wild, not with Watcher-blue, but with a feverish, desperate rage. “You!” his thought was a spear of pure hatred. “You brought the end! You and your noise! You drew the final silence!”He’d broken. The shock of Lyra’s return, the silent snow, the looming end—it had shattered whatever fragile peace we’d built. In his grief-twisted mind, the cause wasn't some abstract Conductor. It was the source of the change. The Storm-Bringer.His massive form collided with me, a wall of muscle and fury. We hit the ground, the air

The healing of Maia’s wound was slow, fragile work. Silas’s “laugh-scaffold” held, a shimmering, snuffling patch of golden sound over the grey void. Each day, the dead circle shrank by a hair’s breadth, replaced by new, pink skin and the faint regrowth of silver-tipped fur. The process was exhausting for everyone—Silas had to constantly reinforce the melody, Maia slept twenty hours a day, and the rest of us tiptoed around in a state of nervous exhaustion.The silent statue of Karn in the village green was a constant, grim reminder. Lyra spent most of her time there, a silent sentinel. The initial awe and fear from the villagers had turned into a kind of morbid reverence. They started leaving small offerings at his stone paws—a fresh-baked roll, a child’s drawing of a wolf, a single wildflower. It was heartbreaking.Kairi and I moved around each other with a careful, brittle politeness. The fight by the creek had left a crack between us, and the fear of the Conductor was like ice water

The "Symphony of Targeted Irritation," as Silas insisted on calling it, worked. For a given value of "worked." It didn't stop the grey rain, but it carved out pockets of vibrant, noisy us-ness in the monotonous downpour. Maintaining those pockets, however, was like holding a mental plank contest against the universe. We took shifts, one of us standing out in the deluge being gloriously, specifically annoying while the others rested inside, feeling their edges soften until it was their turn to go out and re-sharpen themselves.After three days of this exhausting cycle, the rain stopped as abruptly as it began. The grey clouds didn't part to reveal blue sky; they just dissolved, leaving behind a washed-out, pastel world. The colors were there, but muted. The sounds were back, but tinny, like a poorly-tuned instrument. It was as if the world had been put through a filter labeled "Almost."We gathered on the porch, assessing the damage. The rosemary bush was a vague green blob. The unique