Novels by A.marvel

The city did not announce Mara’s disappearance.It never did.Disappearances were absorbed the way rain was absorbed by cracked pavement,quietly, unevenly, leaving darker patches that no one wanted to step in. Leanna learned of it the way she learned everything now, indirectly, through absence.Mara did not answer her comms.Mara did not show up for the morning briefing.Mara did not argue when Leanna proposed rerouting supplies.At first, Leanna told herself it was caution,that Mara was lying low,that this was what survival looked like now silence, misdirection, patience.By noon, denial tasted like ash.Leanna stood in the small office behind the clinic, hands braced against the desk, staring at the empty chair opposite her. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper,outside, volunteers moved in low voices, their steps careful, as if sound itself had become dangerous.She replayed the last conversation with Korrin again and again, searching for the moment she might have mi

The city did not react all at once,and that was what unsettled Leanna most.There was no riot after the Council’s announcement,no cheers either,just a slow, uneven ripple,conversations in doorways, pauses in broadcast chatter, eyes lifting from screens and then dropping again. People absorbed the news the way one absorbed a change in weather,warily, with the instinct to adapt before questioning whether it was deserved.Leanna Hale appointed Civil Liaison to the Council,temporary mandate,oversight of humanitarian coordination.Temporary.Everything dangerous was always temporary at first.She watched the broadcast from a quiet room above the clinic, the sound turned low,her name looked strange in official typography, stripped of context and blood and fear,cleaned,sanitized.Legitimized.Mara stood behind her, arms folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white.“You didn’t warn us,” Mara said.Leanna didn’t turn. “I didn’t know until an hour ago.”“You could have refused.”“Yes.”Silenc

The city learned restraint the way a wounded animal learned stillness.Carefully,suspiciously,with flinches that never quite went away.Leanna felt it every morning when she walked through the lower districts,the pauses in conversation when uniforms passed, the way shopkeepers kept their hands visible, the way laughter died down too fast,peace had arrived, but it had not been welcomed,it sat heavy in the air, like humidity before a storm.She had stopped pretending this was temporary.That was the first lie leadership burned out of you.There was no until Ethan returns,no until Korrin overreaches,no clean turning point waiting just beyond the horizon. There was only now messy, compromised, fragile,and the question of what kind of damage you were willing to accept in order to keep it standing.Leanna stood in the clinic doorway and watched volunteers work in practiced silence. Bandages. Rations. Quiet reassurances murmured to people who didn’t ask for hope anymore just relief.Mara joi

The city learned how to live without Ethan faster than it should have,and that was the cruelest part.Leanna noticed it in the small things first the way patrol routes stabilized, the way blackouts became scheduled instead of sudden, the way people stopped looking over their shoulders every time a rumor passed through the streets. Order settled in like dust, quiet and persistent, coating everything.Korrin’s order.She hated how efficient it was.Three days after Ethan left, Leanna stood on the balcony of the safehouse and watched the city breathed,morning traffic crawled below,vendors argued over prices,children ran across cracked pavement chasing something that looked like hope but might have just been boredom.Life went on.That should have been comforting.Instead, it felt like betrayal.She pressed her palms against the railing, grounding herself. Sleep had become optional these past nights,brief, shallow, full of half-dreams where Ethan was always just out of reach,not dead,not

The city did not celebrate.That was the first thing Leanna noticed when they released her.No crowds,no cheers,no whispered legends rising up the way they always had when Ethan broke something that was supposed to be unbreakable,just streets moving at their usual pace, people stepping around each other with careful indifference, as if nothing monumental had happened at all.As if the world hadn’t tilted.She stood at the edge of the transport bay long after the guards unlocked her cuffs and shoved her forward,the metal doors slid shut behind her with a sound that felt final in a way she couldn’t explain,not imprisonment ending,but something else.Something quieter.Her wrists were raw,her body ached in the dull, exhausted way that came after fear had burned itself out,but it was her chest that hurt most tight, shallow breaths, like her lungs didn’t trust the air anymore.Ethan.That was the thought she couldn’t escape.Not where he was,but what did he do.She had seen the broadcast.

Night did not fall in the city anymore.It descended.The kind of darkness that didn’t simply remove light but rearranged meaning,turning familiar streets into corridors of intent, every shadow a decision waiting to be made. Ethan moved through it without disguise, without haste. That alone felt like a provocation.People noticed.They always did now.Some turned away quickly, fear reflexive and sharp. Others stared too long, eyes burning with questions they would never ask out loud,a few inclined their heads, gestures small but weighted, like prayers offered to something they weren’t sure deserved worship.Ethan hated that most of all.He adjusted the strap of his jacket and kept walking.Korrin’s perimeter loomed ahead not a wall, not a gate, but a gradual shift in atmosphere. Surveillance density increased,patrol patterns tightened,the air itself felt watched. This was where the city stopped pretending it was shared.Ethan crossed the invisible line anyway.Immediately, his comm ch