Waiting was incredibly boring, especially for Shade, submerged in dim underwater darkness where he could not even exchange glances with anyone else.
He sat in the water with his eyes open, watching his surroundings. The dim environment easily invited stray thoughts. Though the glow of his own embers faintly illuminated the area, in that silence, such a subtle trace of light only made it easier for his mind to wander:
Little Mia and Miss Reinhart really do have very similar temperaments. I wonder, after she drank the Cat in a Bottle potion, did she kidnap Miss Larson from the Far North? Miss Larson can't possibly be Miss Aisha Eisberg's cousin, can she?
To keep himself from overthinking, Shade simply closed his eyes and quietly waited for the purification to end.
"This is taking forever."
With his eyes closed, his hearing became sharper. At first, he could only hear the faint gurgling of spring water, but as time passed, other sounds began to reach his ears.
Shade could not tell whether those noises were auditory hallucinations or illusions. Pretending that nothing had happened, he remained motionless with his eyes shut and continued waiting, ignoring the "random thoughts" growing louder and louder. Even when he imagined Little Mia running around to make time pass faster—ideally skipping straight to the next part of the story like a divider in a Knight Novel—the sounds that did not belong to the spring grew increasingly distinct. Eventually, Shade heard a complete, understandable sentence:
"Miss Annette, do you truly intend to enter?"
"What?"
Startled, Shade immediately opened his eyes, and the noises vanished at once. He looked around, then closed his eyes again. The voices returned.
Though he could still see the ocher aura and the rope tied around his waist with his eyes open, once he