"Diego, the soldier is gone," you try to say with your physical mouth, though it's hard to tell if it's getting through. "Some relevant info, his name was Thomas and he killed his supposed best friend Robert in order to get with his fiancée, Charlotte."
"Okay. Where to next?" you hear Diego ask, though his voice sounds like it's a million miles away.
The gray door appears next to you again. You look at the photograph, and see a man in clothes look like they're meant to endure hard labor.
"I'll head to the quarry," you tell Diego. "I think one of these people is a quarry worker."
You open the door and step through onto the edge of a quarry so covered in fog, you cannot see the bottom.
You realize now, standing here at the edge, that the main thing to have changed about this quarry over the decades must be how much has been dug out. It's impossible to tell what state it's in now, though. Not unless you were to descend all the way down.
"Help!" someone calls out.
You see no one, and sound carries oddly here. It's hard to say whether it's because of the quarry, or because of the nature of how this astral stuff works.
"Someone!" you hear again.
It seems to be coming from nearby, but inside the quarry. You take the final few steps and look over the side.
A man in overalls and a dirty shirt is hanging from a ledge just below you. He's maybe in his mid-thirties, but wears an expression of fear that transforms his face into that of a child.
"I thought I wanted to but I don't," he pleads. "Help me."
You kneel down at the edge and begin to lean forward. Your gaze meets his as you reach out, and in them you see more than you thought you could ever see within someone else's eyes.
Bloodstained granite. A crowd of panicking workers. A man staring up at you through dead eyes, his body crushed under the weight of a granite slab. Someone else's arm behind him. Twisted limbs you can't make sense of. More blood than could belong to two people. Or three people, or even four.
You realize you've shrunk away from the man. Shaking your head, blinking, nothing makes the images go away.
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