Chapter 108: Journey to the StarSky Guild
The afternoon crept forward with unwavering slowness, wrapping the city in a blanket of gray melancholy. The sky, once a brilliant blue, had donned a veil of ash-toned clouds, filtering the sunlight into a diffuse, ghostly glow. It was as if the world itself sensed an impending change, bracing for the inevitable.
Isaac sat on the edge of his bed, his back slightly hunched beneath the invisible weight of memory. His fingers absentmindedly traced the rough texture of the blanket as his gaze lost somewhere between here and nowhere watched the patterns the light cast through the half-closed shutters. Geometric lines sprawled across the floor, shifting silently, reminding him that even the sharpest shadows eventually blurred into darkness.
A shiver ran down his neck, and he couldn’t tell whether it came from the cool breeze sneaking in through the window or from the relentless waiting. Hours had passed like a broken hourglass sometimes tumbling in rapid grains, sometimes trickling so slowly it felt frozen. Isaac drifted between two states: a nervous tension that clenched his muscles at the slightest noise, and a cold, almost surgical detachment that severed thought from emotion. He knew this state. He had lived it before, on missions—when fear distills into razor-sharp clarity.
Lazare Korr’s words still echoed in his mind, weaving themselves into the traumatic images he kept trying to push away. He will come back, Isaac thought, closing his eyes for a moment. He’ll return, and everything will start again. A new cycle.In his clenched fist, he felt the edge of his hunter ID tag the one he’d nearly thrown away after the massacre. A simple engraved piece of metal, now heavy as a whole world.
Even his own breathing sounded foreign in the silence of the room, a constant reminder that he was still here, still alive, when so many others were not. The faces of his comrades passed through him like blades. Not the mangled corpses he’d seen in the dungeon but their faces before. Smiling. Confident. Laughing around a campfire.
The shrill chime of the doorbell tore through his thoughts like a knife.
Isaac flinched, muscles tensed, then checked the time: 2:12 PM sharp. Lazare Korr, punctual to a fault. A trait some admired, one Isaac now found almost cruel. As if even time itself bowed to the will of that man.
There was no voice from downstairs this time. Léa had locked herself in a wall of silence since their argument that morning. He had heard the harsh slam of the kitchen door, then nothing only the occasional clatter of utensils being used with a bit more force than necessary. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand.
Rising with deliberate slowness, Isaac smoothed down the fabric of his dark shirt. He passed by the mirror without looking, avoiding his own reflection like one avoids a suspicious stranger. His footsteps echoed on the wooden staircase, each creaking step ticking away the seconds of some unseen countdown.