He’s gone before the sun rises, getting that early start he’d warned Kajek about. Inquisitor Fortier said dawn, but there is time to grab a quick breakfast in one of the narrow alleys of Ul’dah. He eats it standing, watching the sun rise from the cool shadow of the Gate of Nald. Dusty violet gives way to reds and golds like a stain spreading up from the East.

It is a brilliant sunrise, and it is the last thing he sees. 

Inquisitor Fortier is kept waiting at the meeting point for as long as it takes him to remember what is happening. 

Sasha Rochester, the charming scholar Raphael had met the day before, is forgotten at the fountain in the Gold Court. She may think their meeting had slipped his mind, or that he had only been being polite when he asked when he could see her next. 

The Glass Network is unlikely to notice his silence on the linkshell; he had never been as active as he should have been, and he had made a habit of missing their most important battles. 

The Crescent Eminence has yet to announce their next meeting; it will be some time before his silence is noticed. 

Personal linkpearls, few as they are, relay only static, as if they have been left active but submerged. 

Raphael’s apartment is in good order; nothing is missing, and it has the lived-in feel of one about to return at any moment. 

Perhaps the strangest thing about his absence is how normal everything continues to be. Morning comes, the afternoon is scorching, and as evening falls and the Quicksand fills with its usual patrons, Raphael’s favorite stool is filled by a miqo’te girl chattering eagerly with a tall, grim Xaela looming over her. Momodi fills their glasses. Laughter echoes off the sand-colored stone. 

In the corner, a spindly Duskwight in a dark robe solicits passerby with reasonable success: he disappears up the steps in unseemly company– the rougher, apparently, the better– until it becomes clear that whatever he sells, he does it from a rented room. However, as the bells march past and the crowd thins, the Duskwight is nowhere to be found. Momodi wipes the counters clean. A guard makes a cursory round of the place, grumbling at a pair of roegadyn too drunk to rise from their table. 

The day ends as inevitably as it began. For Kajek, perhaps, the darkness is particularly thick, a shadowy syrup obscuring his efforts to find his follower. But no matter where he looks or how loudly he calls, Raphael’s silence remains as deafening as ever. 

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