Chapter 10: Feeling a Little Dizzy

Chapter 10: Feeling a Little Dizzy

The door closed behind me with a soft thud. Sunlight still poured down—mid-afternoon, plenty of time before nightfall. The Niakrandra wouldn’t bloom until moonlight anyway. Might as well sit somewhere quiet and finally figure out what the hell these floating boxes actually *did*.

I scanned the street. A few paces down, tucked between a baker’s shop and a narrow alley, was a low stone bench built into the base of a wide fountain. The fountain itself was modest: a carved basin with water trickling from the mouth of a weathered stone fish, moss softening the edges. A handful of people sat nearby—old men playing dice, a woman feeding crumbs to pigeons—but the bench was empty.

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