Chapter 212: How the Sky Refused
Black Moon Territory, The Outer Wall
Torug's POV
I stopped trying to guess the hour after the fourth wave. By now, somewhere past what should have been a full day and night cycle, I gave up entirely.
The moon hadn't moved. Every living thing in this world was learning to read the slow, familiar crawl across the sky without thinking, almost the same way you read breathing.
Instead, the violet bloom hung at the same impossible angle it claimed the first night, as though the sky itself had been nailed shut around it.
"Still no dawn," Nazu said. She appeared at my shoulder with a waterskin I hadn't asked for but drank from anyway, gratefully. "I checked with Vaggi. She says the old charms for marking a day's turn aren't registering anything at all. According to every spiritual measure she knows, it's still the same night it was when the moon first rose."
"How many waves since?" I asked.
