His stomach growled like distant thunder amid the silence—a low rumble slipping into the city's noisy stillness like a shy wave lost in a storm. Alpha placed a hand over his stomach with clear irritation, then exhaled slowly, as though forcing himself to remember that—whatever he was—he remained shackled to the burdens of human needs. He reached into his tattered pockets and rummaged through them absentmindedly, his eyes scanning the tangled outskirts of the city blurred in the midday haze.
There was nothing in the first pocket. Nor in the second. But when he opened the inner pocket of his worn-out cloak, he found a small piece of cloth tied with a thread. He untied it slowly, revealing a few familiar coins inside—the ones Ihram's wife had given him earlier that morning, just before his departure.
"I didn't think I'd actually need these…" he muttered to himself with a faint smile.
