The wind smelled like stone dust and drift oil. Somewhere down the line, someone was welding through broken tracks again.
The platform lights made everything too bright and too dull at the same time. Washed-out color. Harsh outlines. The kind of lighting that made sleep-deprived choices feel justified.
He stood still.
Didn't sit.
Didn't check the time.
Just stared down the tunnel until the carriage arrived, a long, narrow-bodied model with flickering glyph patterns and a faint hum like someone had jammed a sound crystal into a can.
He got in.
Nobody else did.
The cabin smelled like hot plastic and mana-burnt copper. One of the lights in the back strobed faintly.
Lucen sat in the far left corner, bag at his feet, hands loose in his lap.
The system pinged once.
Faint. Background level.
He didn't open it.
Not yet.
Not when the last thirty minutes still felt too close to the front of his brain.
The ride took nine stops.
Each one a little worse than the last.
