There’s only one way forward. Misery pads along the curve of the corridor, left hand against the cool white, feeling for openings. Half her senses pricked for danger and the other half for holystone. She can’t tell if it’s the salves, but her stone-sense is fizzing sideways, like cremoline left uncapped too long. Her ears ring like the aftermath of a night with no sleep. There must be stone everywhere, the guts of the station riddled with it, shredding her focus in a million different directions. On Rootsdown, arid and barren, people lived a hundred to each clay reef and holystone sang across the landscape purer and clearer than church bells. Misery knew where every vein of the glistening stuff lay, and it was good business too, charging millions for prospecting services, dragging it out with surprise delays, invoicing for equipment she didn’t need and never bought. Good times. She’s got to find some like hustle once she escapes.

At the end of the curve, the corridor takes a sharp left into unseen territory, and she creeps toward it with full caution. It’s unsettling how empty this place is, compared to the squalor of Rootsdown and the lively crew of the Duke’s ship. Feels like a trap. Might be a trap.

Ruin materializes before her. “You had a window for turning back. That is now over.” But zie doesn’t seem alarmed. Zie seems amused.

She hears the footsteps before she sees them. Two saints, hair shimmering, gender unknown, burst through the mirage of Ruin’s chest and stop, blinking. One of them? Both? One was the saint that brought her dinner. But which one? They look identical. Dress identical. White hair and white skin and white robes with crisp lines that boat over their figures. Twins?

No. Not twins. Can’t be. She’s seen more saints dressed like this: on her way in, dotted on walkways at a distance. Even then she thought there was something eerie about the way they were all the same shape and height, same hair color, same haircut. Were they all instaprints, like this? Clones? That couldn’t be. Revulsion heaves through her flesh.

The saints don’t blink.

“Hello,” she says. “Nice day out.”

Silence. No emotion surfaces on their perfect, mirrored features. What are they? Stillness in these situations means danger. The one on the left, calm as a mountain, tilts hir head like a wild grimclaw before it lunges.