A few quiet days passed.
No alarms. No urgent knocks. No holograms lighting up with blinking red text.
Just time.
The kind of time that didn't feel borrowed. The kind that settled in your bones, slow and steady, like warm sunlight after a long storm.
The Nocturne estate stayed calm. Morning meals rolled out without announcement—fresh, hot, and served with silent precision by staff who'd been trained in elite military kitchens but now only worked for family.
No one brought up the college again. Not directly. Not in passing. It was like an unspoken rule had taken hold: don't ruin the stillness.
Ethan spent most of those days out in the garden paths, where the air shimmered faintly from the environmental dome's filtration grid.
The outer flowers bloomed a little longer in this zone—extended growth fields, courtesy of a quiet deal Lilith had once made with a plant-specialist from Valmere.
