The house was small and quiet, and smelled of bread and woodsmoke.
Noah sat on a low wooden bench beside a nine-year-old boy in a backwater Dimension no one had ever bothered to name. Through the open window, a mother was hanging washing in the yard, huming. The boy's feet dangled well above the floor. He swung them gently back and forth, and his face, for one moment, was very old.
"Every death teaches," the boy said softly, in the Sealed One's voice. "I wonder what this one will teach me."
"Nothing," Noah said. "This one is the last."
And everywhere at once, it happened!
He had already moved exactly as the dream had shown him! It was like knowing how a story unfolded and he simply had to follow his previous steps.
