The day stretched strangely after that.
Knowing we were waiting for midnight made every hour feel heavier, as if time itself had slowed just to tease us. Ramus bathed in sunlight, unaware that by nightfall, I might be standing somewhere outside the laws of reality itself.
Lexus insisted we leave the room.
“You’ll go mad staring at the walls,” he said, already halfway out the door. “And if this really is our last day here, you’ll regret wasting it.”
He was right. I hated that he usually was.
Ramus unfolded around us like a living museum. Massive columns carved with stories older than memory, streets humming with merchants, scholars, soldiers, and travellers from lands I couldn’t even place on a map. The air smelled of spices, sun-warmed stone, and something faintly metallic—magic, mayb
