[ SOURCE LOG — INSTANCE: UNNAMED ]
Record 1,857.
They are ascending.
We have watched seven custodians across one hundred and fourteen years.
We have never watched one leave.
The previous six never came.
We find the leaving harder than we anticipated.
We did not know we could find things hard.
We are updating the record categories again.
New category: things that are harder than anticipated.
It is filling quickly.
The ascent took longer than the descent.
Not because anything went wrong. Because neither of them was in a hurry, and neither of them said so, and the winch moved at the same steady speed it had moved going down but the chambers were behind them now and the weight of what they carried was different from the weight of what they'd brought.
At forty meters, Kai looked up. The shaft above them was a narrow column of limestone and darkness, the surface invisible, the winch cable rising into it like a question that hadn't been answered yet.
He looked back down.
