The construction in the physical world was loud—a symphony of shattering stone and the rasp of saws—but the internal world of the four was becoming a place of profound, echoing stillness. The "Nice Dreams" were no longer just nighttime visitors; they were bleeding into the daylight hours, manifesting as shared hallucinations or sudden bursts of sensory memory that felt more substantial than the cold Northern air.
It was in the late afternoon, during a brief lull in the renovations of the West Wing, that the four found themselves in the newly hollowed-out sunroom. The exterior wall had been removed, replaced by a temporary wooden scaffold that framed a breathtaking view of the valley. For the first time, the manor felt less like a cage and more like a porch.
Nyx sat on a crate of floor ti
