She looked down the balcony, her gaze lingering, as if she could force more detail out of the darkness through patience alone.
She turned away.
Not fully trusting what she had seen, or rather, what she hadn't..
The thread was still pointing down.
But there were still the other passages to either of her sides.
And while everything so far suggested uniformity and emptiness, she wanted to be sure.
So she went left first, through the short passage, with a door waiting for her at the end.
She paused briefly before opening it, her hand resting against the surface just long enough to feel for anything beyond.
Nothing.
She opened it.
It was another barren room. The same as she had come in from.
Empty and unlived.
She stepped inside, only far enough to confirm it, her gaze sweeping the corners before she stepped back out and closed the door as quietly as she had opened it.
She moved to another passage, looked into the rooms and left. Then did the same with the next. And the next.
They were all the same.
No variation or deviation between them.
That was enough.
There was nothing here for her to find.
She returned to the balcony and looked for a way down.
There were stairs on her right.
She went to them.
They were made of stone, but heavily worn. Unlike the untouched state of the other rooms.
Sonder paused at the top.
Her gaze moved downward into the darkness.
They led outward and down, then turned sharply inward again, continuing deeper.
She descended, and the darkness grew denser.
And Sonder could smell something, faintly.
It was familiar, in an unpleasant way.
Of course she didn't like it.
This space, most likely the ground floor, was not like the one above.
It felt larger, mostly because there was nothing in it.
It may have been completely empty.
When she looked up, she could see the balcony, but not much more.
A few pillars supported it.
It was hard to see, but Sonder wasn't afraid of the dark, it was just difficult to navigate, even though she could see better than most in such darkness.
The only thing that was clearly visible was the threads of blue and the strongest one leading down.
There was no mistaking it. She was close.
That was her first clue. Down.
And then there was the smell.
Even though she didn't like it, she inhaled deeply and slowly.
She tried to find out where it was coming from.
It was sour, and rotten.
She followed it instead of the thread.
She moved with more certainty than just wandering through the dark; guided by the unpleasant trace in the air.
The floor was smooth beneath her feet, uninterrupted, giving nothing away.
But the smell grew stronger.
At what must have been the far end of the first floor, there was another descent.
Another set of stairs, and at the bottom, a heavy door.