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I blink. "Since when?"

"Since mind-your-own-business o'clock."

"Dama."

"Relax. We're not buying a starship. We're buying coffee."

"Okay." I roll my eyes, grab my coat from the back of the chair, and head for the door. "Let's go, then."

The walk into Tolian turns out to be even shorter than the twelve minutes Damaris promised.

One minute we're leaving the academy hill behind, the next we're spilling into the capital proper, the streets opening wide beneath us in pale stone and clean light. The afternoon is still bright, but the city already feels like it's leaning toward evening, shopfronts glowing warmer by the minute, old lantern fixtures beginning to burn gold against carved facades while hover traffic slips overhead in soft, steady streams.

I barely have time to take any of it in before Damaris makes a strangled sound beside me.

"Good Light." He turns in a slow circle, staring upward. "Ro, do you see that? That building is insane."

"You've said that about six different buildings already," I tell him, fighting a grin. "At this point I'm starting to think you'd fall in love with a particularly well-lit brick."

The city rises around us in polished glass, old stone, and impossible money, the kind of place built by people who expect to be admired for it. Sleek transit rails hum overhead. Light flickers across tall windows and carved balconies. Every street looks planned, every storefront filled with things that probably cost more than a month's rent back home.

Damaris looks ready to adopt the entire city, but the more he falls in love with it, the more uneasy I become.

Back in Düren, everything feels more lived-in. Dust in the air. Heat on your skin. Buildings put up because people need somewhere to live, not because anyone cares what they look like. Here, everything feels too precise. Too polished. Like the city was built for people who already know how to move through it without being noticed for the wrong reasons.

Damaris keeps talking as we follow the flow of the afternoon crowd downhill, weaving past people in tailored coats, students in academy colors, and couples drifting between shopfronts with bags in their hands.

"I'm telling you, we should come into the city more often." He gestures broadly at everything around us, nearly clipping a passing pedestrian. "Everything here is better. The food, the clothes, the actual atmosphere. I am not spending the whole semester trapped behind academy walls eating sad cafeteria noodles."

"You've been here for four days."

"And I've already made excellent decisions."

I huff. "That's not reassuring."

He bumps my shoulder with his. "Relax. I know where I'm going."

Ten minutes later, after leading us three streets too far and insisting a dead-end alley was a shortcut, he stops abruptly in front of a narrow side street washed in red-gold light.

The whole block shifts there, the polished storefronts thinning out around us, but I barely notice.

"I think we took a wrong turn." Damaris glances down at his multi-slate. "Actually, I think we took several wrong turns."

"Probably." I know this street.

"Pretty sure this isn't the market district. Unless people on Sero buy vegetables from places that look like they're about to host a murder."

"Maybe."

Damaris laughs. "Maybe," he echoes.

It takes me a second to realize I've actually answered him, my stomach tightening as my gaze catches on the building at the far end of the block rising beneath a carved black archway exactly where I remember it.

The Black Chapel.

For one stupid second, I wonder if he's inside.

And if he is, would he see me walking in?