As the huge circular staircase curved around to the left, the light from above faded away, leaving her in complete darkness. She felt her way to the edge of the next step and slipped out into the void, finding stone beneath her feet. She repeated the process again and again, and every time she slipped from the level surface she feared that it would be the last step, and the next drop would be a hundred times greater.

“Ramus!” she shouted. Her voice echoed away, above and below her, but nothing answered back. He could be too far down, she thought. Or maybe he doesn't want to answer.

Perhaps he was dead.

If he had fallen from the last step, and she fell too, she could die when she hit his remains. They would rot down here together in an eternal embrace, never having said they were sorry.

“Ramus!” she called again. “Wait for me!”

There was no answer, so she carried on falling. After a while she realized she should have been counting the steps. There had been maybe a hundred steps up to the top of the building, and she had come down perhaps thirty. Seventy more like this until she reached ground level. Or less, if whatever this building contained was hidden away at its very heart. Or more, if it was simply the gateway to somewhere deeper and darker. An abyss, Sordon had said. It may have been a hundred steps up, but Nomi was suddenly terrified that it was a thousand back down.

She went on, and when she paused a few steps later she heard shuffling sounds from above her, and the crackling sounds of Sentinels communicating. They were descending, but they sounded cautious, no longer hooting in anger, and perhaps they were coming down here for the very first time. She knew so little about them. Sordon had told her some, venting his guilt at her whether she wanted to hear it or not, and now she wished she had asked him more. He had been up here for so long. . . .

“They're coming down, Ramus!” she shouted. “The fallen sleeper cannot wake, and they're here to make sure of that!” Her words echoed before her and she listened for a response. Again, nothing.

The stone became slimy. Water trickled somewhere in the darkness, and Nomi's hands slipped on the slick surface. Warmth wafted from below and she paused again, breath held as she tried to make out what had just happened. Her heart hammered against her chest, blood pulsed in her ears, she heard a drip as blood from her leg fell to the step below. Another gush of warm air, and this time she breathed it in to see what it contained.

“Breath of a God,” a voice said beside her.