The strange events of Rue Ruine

Chapter VII: The Between

-uuuck?" said Zayra as he put on the lens made of the weird liquid.
The Whole room changed before his eyes: the colors faded leaving only shades of black white and purple, some things disappeared by his sight, some desks, most of his equipment and chalkboards; and other things instead were new...
There were various chemistry tools like alcohol lamps and various burners, a great number of glassware, though most of it was shattered and covered in a deep layer of what seemed like dust.
The room was the same but definitely different. He began to put on and off the lens to take better notes of the various changes; unfortunately after a few minutes it melted back into the liquid and he had to wait before he could keep going, so he decided to carve more molds so he could make more lenses.
After a few hours of setting everything up he finally had 3 pairs of lenses ready for his experiments.
He sat down, exhausted from all the fine work that went into carving those mold in order to create those simple things.
But the curiosity quickly gave him new strengths as he took one pair of lens and resumed his research.
Before the new lens melted he found out the following: ****
After exploring his office he extended his research to the apartment finding the same degree of seemingly abandonment: the ground was filled with unintelligible papers and books, the furniture was broken or crooked and everything was covered in this layer of dust.
The last room he decided to check was  Raphael’s. He had been holding himself off by his good manners but the scientist in him couldn't wait any longer: he took a deep breath and got inside his room with a new pair of lenses, the last one.

Raphael was close to the end of his shift. Having a new environment in which he could work greatly accelerated the time of his translation from gibberish to math and order; finally a new accountant book was written and he could begin to update it starting by the last three days of incomes and outcomes.
"Knock knock" said the door after being knocked
"It's open" replied Raphael
"Ahoy" yelled back Dorian, opening the door with a grin "New office hey? Some lad got fancy"
"It appears so" Raphael said smiling back at him
"T’was about damn time, the wolves locked us out of here for almost two weeks"
"Two weeks for a suicide? That sounds excessive"
Dorian nodded "Well I guess they cleaned this place real good, they even ripped the paper wall off!"
"Did they?"
"A real mess trust me, they did us a favor, drenched in blood it was!" He said looking around the office. "Let's go mate, we've got drinks to drink"
"You know what? Fuck it, im in! I had a hell of a night"
"That's the spirit me boy"
They walked to the tavern chatting about their days back in the kingdom and in a few minutes there they were.
****Lots of noise, singing, some mismatched musicists, the worst and cheapest meal you could fathom and lots and lots of alcohol, this was definitely your average slums local.
"Lemme introduce ya" Dorian went to a table where 3 muscular men were playing a game of cards between a beer and another.
"OY LADS!"
"HEY!!" They all cheered in chorus.
"D'ye know our new accountant? He's from the ol' country"

The night was enough to cheer Raphael up and make him forget all the strange things that happened to him in his short time in Marcalme; in fact, the cheap booze was enough to make him forget the night entirely...

He woke up the next morning with a huge headache drilling in his skull and his limbs felt numb; once he finally gathered the strength to open his eyes, instead of the ceiling of his room in Rue Ruine he saw a seagull staring at him.

"The fuck am I?"

The seagull tilted its head slightly before screeching and poked his head with its beak.

"You fuckin' come here" he tried to catch the bird but it flew out of his reach as he tumbled back on the ground, which felt like it sinked under his feet. The light of the sun was blinding so he had to squint his eyes to see where he was... which was the beach.
"Makes sense," he thought.
"Does it?" Said a voice
Raph looked around but initially saw no one; suddenly a man stood up from a patch of dried algae revealing whose voice was it, Dorian’s.