A few moments before...
By the time Emily, Lydia, and Catrina came for him in the penthouse, Phei had failed at everything.
Phei had been sitting in the same place for almost an hour; cross-legged on the carpet with the Page of Infinity Runes spread before him and Of Longing in his hands.
He could feel the pins and needles crawling up his calf every time he shifted, a dull electric itch that he kept ignoring because the page was right there and the runes were right there and if he just stared at them for another thirty seconds, another minute, another five, something would click;
'Something has to click.'
Nothing clicked.
He had been trying to comprehend even a single character — one, just one, any one — from the dense calligraphic labyrinth that colonised the parchment.
And he could feel them and yet that had become the most maddening part.
