Auren watched the two of them in silence, the weight of Meredith's words hanging in the air between them. She'd given only the bones of what had befallen them in the past few... days? His mind struggled to grasp it as anything but hours.
Two things had warped his perception of time: first, the eternal night that refused to yield to dawn, and second, that pit of absolute darkness—the realm of true darkness or perhaps the well of the night. Auren couldn't be certain, though he suspected both forces had entwined their fingers in this mystery.
Time either didn't exist in the realm of true darkness or it flowed by its own incomprehensible rules—concepts that slipped through Auren's understanding. His knowledge of such cosmic matters remained frustratingly shallow.
What he could grasp, however, was the stark contrast between his descent and return. The agonizing eternity it took to fall through the well compared to his sudden ejection stood very clear.
