The bar was called The Last Light—a bitter joke, considering Vester existed in perpetual darkness held back only by soul-force lamps that mimicked day and night through dimming cycles.
Two workers sat at the scarred wooden counter, their shift-stained uniforms marking them as warehouse laborers. The older one—Grent, forty-three, missing two fingers from a loading accident five years back—raised his mug in mock salute.
"To Clear Light's Eve," he said, voice already slurring. "The Republic's favorite excuse to pretend we're celebrating something."
His companion—Vix, younger by a decade, still new enough to Vester to remember what actual holidays felt like—clinked his mug against Grent's. "What are we celebrating again? The Great One dying? That seems… morbid."
