[SixOfSpades]

Doing the Temple Ruins backwards might actually be possible, but I've never tested the theory. After you kill the Shade Lord, the map changes to one that's virtually identical--the only changes are the statue of Amaunator, the fountain....and now there's a little path that connects the area where you fight the Shade Lord with the rest of the map. Therefore, it's possible that one of these scenarios happened:
A) Rogue_At_Heart hit a weird bug in which his party was sent to the "daytime" Temple Ruins map instead of the "nighttime" one, and was therefore able to walk right up to the Shade Lord and say hi.
B) Through some weirdness, Rogue_At_Heart's party entered the map on the east side, rather than the west. There is an exit point on the edge of the map very close to the Shade Lord, after all, and most maps have different "entry points," depending on where you just came from.
C) Resting in the Temple Ruins is enough to change the "Night" map into the "Day" one, thus making the path appear. This is highly doubtful, though.