Bruce, Kael, and Theron walked back to the portal exit slowly.
The Library was still quiet around them. Still deep and vast in its unbounded space. Bruce felt, walking through it, the specific weight of having read what he had just read.
He had known, in the abstract, that the climb ahead of him was difficult. He had not known, until today, that he was the seventh case in an unbroken pattern of failure and death.
That was, that was harder to hold than he had expected.
At the portal, he stopped for a moment before pressing his hand to the reader.
He looked at Kael and Theron.
"I am not sure I am going to succeed in this."
Both of them looked at him.
"Six cases before me. Three killed by Sisel Marn. One killed by Ashen Carr's predecessors. Two who lived only because they stopped climbing. Zero who reached SS. I am going to try to reach SSS. That is beyond anything anyone in my category has ever done."
"Yes," Kael said.
