Lahat ng Kabanata ng Craving the alpha soldier : Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Tyla’s POVThe morning after the letters arrive, the city sounds different.Not louder. Not quieter. Simply… unafraid of being unfinished.I notice it while standing at the window, mug cooling in my hands, watching a group of apprentices argue cheerfully over how to re-seat a stone that’s been crooked since before the war. No overseer hovers. No one waits for permission. They try something. It fails. They laugh. They try again.Arthur comes up behind me, resting his chin briefly against my shoulder. He smells like ink and smoke—plans and fireplaces and a life lived without ceremony.“They’re still arguing,” he says.“They will,” I reply. “That’s not a flaw.”He hums, amused. “You’ve ruined the word ‘peace’ for me.”“Good.”By midmorning, I’m called—not summoned—to the council hall.That difference matters.The hall itself has changed since the early days. Fewer banners. Fewer symbols meant to impress. More light. More chairs arranged in ways that can be moved when people disagree abou

Tyla’s POVThe world does not change all at once.It exhales.I notice it in the pauses—those small, almost invisible spaces where something could be taken by force and instead is left alone.The day after Arthur admits he’s proud of being unnecessary, the council hall empties before dusk. Not because everything is resolved, but because people decide to sleep on their arguments instead of sharpening them into weapons. A month ago, that would have felt like failure.Now it feels like restraint.I walk the long gallery alone, my footsteps echoing against the stone that once memorized my urgency. The walls are bare where banners used to hang—symbols of certainty, of destiny, of rule. We took them down quietly. No ceremony. No declaration. Just an understanding that walls do not need to be told what they are for.Neither do people.In the eastern wing, I find a group of scribes arguing over a charter draft. They glance up when they see me, tension flickering instinctively across their fac

Tyla’s POVThe first real failure happens on a market day.Not quietly. Not philosophically. Loud enough that people argue about it for weeks afterward, reshaping the story to fit their comfort.A grain contract collapses—misread terms, assumed consent, trust extended too far in one direction and not far enough in another. By noon, two storehouses are locked, one caravan is stranded, and an entire district is convinced it has been cheated.It is not a catastrophe.Which somehow makes it worse.Catastrophes unify people through fear. This—this is inconvenience sharpened into resentment. Hunger’s shadow without its urgency. Plenty mismanaged.I hear about it while helping mend a cracked balustrade on the north stairs. Someone mentions my name mid-sentence, then stops as if catching themselves.“They’re asking for you,” the messenger says carefully. “Not to decide. Just to… speak.”I set the stone aside and straighten slowly.This is the test we never named out loud.The square is full w

Tyla’s POVThere comes a day when I do not feel the Veil at all.Not dulled.Not distant.Absent.The realization doesn’t arrive with fear. It slips in quietly, between breaths, as I stand in the kitchen watching water heat over a flame that burns too low and sputters in protest. I wait for the familiar hum to settle in my bones.It doesn’t.For a long moment, I simply stood there, hands resting on the counter, listening inwardly for something that has been part of me for so long I stopped noticing it had weight.Nothing answers.I am not afraid.I am… curious.I didn't tell Arthur at first.I go about the day as if nothing has changed, testing the absence the way you test a sore tooth with your tongue. I walk the streets. I pass arguments and laughter and mistakes unfolding without me. I listen more closely than usual.The world does not feel thinner.If anything, it feels fuller.At the council hall, a debate dissolves into exasperated humor instead of escalation. In the lower marke

Tyla’s POVThe world does not announce its endings.It folds them into mornings.I realize this while standing at the basin, rinsing ash from my hands after helping sift the remains of a workshop lost to the fire. The water runs gray, then clear. Someone laughs nearby—too loudly, too soon—and someone else snaps at them for it. They apologize. They keep working.No one looks for me.No one waits.The absence settles—not like grief, not like relief.Like completion.I walk home alone.The city carries the fire’s memory in small ways: scorched stone scrubbed clean but not forgotten, the smell of smoke braided into bread and wool, the carefulness with which people pass the ruined quarter as if it might still bite.They will rebuild.They always do.The question is not whether anymore.It’s how we are together.At the palace gate, a guard nods to me without recognition.I nod back.There was a time that would have hurt.Now it feels like proof.Arthur is in the kitchen when I find him, sle