Rohan did not find a way off Cael Athis that night.
He did not learn the true price of passage. He did not discover why Hestia's name made Maerin go still, nor why the Great System had begun offering him quests when his Origin Realm system had never once cared enough to suggest anything more helpful than acknowledging that something had died.
What he did do was sleep.
Not well.
The ash-house gave him a narrow bed in a side room with heated stone beneath the floor, a shuttered slit for a window, and a door that did not lock from the inside. Someone had placed a folded blanket at the end of the bed, a jug of mineral water on a low shelf, and a small bell made from dark glass beside it.
For emergencies, apparently.
Rohan had stared at the bell for a while before lying down.
'If I ring this, do they come to help me or stab me?'
Probably depended on the emergency.
