After an hour and a half, as the murmur of the crowd gradually grew into a constant buzz, the carriage came to a stop with a faint creak of wood and the weary squeak of the wheels.
Adam opened his eyes lazily, his brow slightly furrowed. Sleep still weighed on his mind, vague yet unsettling, as if something within him refused to fade away completely.
He blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the light filtering through the cracks in the carriage.
Then...
The sounds of the city hit him all at once.
The shouts of vendors hawking their wares, voices overlapping in a chaos that was hard to follow.
The patter of footsteps on stone.
The scraping of boxes.
Laughter, arguments, haggling.
The salty smell of the sea mingled with hot food, intense spices, and coal smoke—heavy, almost sticky in the air.
Bretan.
