One week turned into two weeks, and the peace in Nocturne began to feel like a fragile dream.
Within the pitch-black, unyielding walls, the city continued to breathe with the same rhythm. The central market grew busier every day: human merchants from the old Earth hawked firearms modified with elven runes, tamed orcs opened stalls selling freshly smoked monster meat seasoned with magical spices, dwarves shouted offers of hybrid armor lightweight yet impervious even to high-level fire spells. Mixed-race children ran between the stalls, laughing while carrying strange toys: rubber balls that bounced on their own thanks to minor gravity magic, or undead dolls that could sing lullabies. The corpse fields on the city's outskirts yielded abundant harvests of glowing black mushrooms, poisonous apples that became sweet after cooking, and even new plants from the fantasy world thriving in dead soil thanks to undead fertilizer.
