Noah went deeper into THE Maw, and he thought about the dead as he planned his stepd from here, knowing Dame Seraphine and others would come soon to search.
The mine took him down through dark that the abandoned scaffolding no longer reached, past the depths where the Source Lifeforms had stopped sending workers, and he walked it alone except for Ruination, who moved beside him as her illusory self, a churning weave of Infinity lines that suggested a shape without committing to one.
He could feel her worry. She did not voice it at first, but it was there in the way her manifestation kept close to him, closer than it usually drifted, the way a person stays near someone they are afraid might fall.
He let himself think about Sir William, because he had learned a long time ago that the dead are owed at least that much, the small dignity of being thought about by the ones who watched them go.
