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He's not entirely sure what the difference between the living things and the dead ones is here. It's easy to tell when they're moving, sure, but he'd accidentally brushed one he had been sure was dead and it skittered away, the corruption that had built up around it crumbling like stone as it did. He'd jumped away, accidentally hit another one, and— he tries not to think about it.
In a different world, when he had been younger, he would have loved to think about it, to study everything here like it was a contained thought-experiment. He can almost picture his younger self's enthusiasm, voice high as he asks about the mechanism of what Jayce can only assume was some sort of mass matter conversion, and he can't stand it. Oh, of course he'd been so fucking naive, bouncing back from something which should have killed him with stars in his eyes, but that's not all.
He's the one causing this.
Maybe not in this world, maybe not this Jayce, but in his world?
He still takes notes, more as a sort of muscle memory than anything else. He has to believe he's getting out of here, sure, but he doesn't know how much the memory of two corpses cradling each other, bodies fusing to the building behind him with mutated magic, will help him once he does. He'll keep it regardless, because that magic was his weapon far before the hammer he's still dragging behind him was, and what sort of scientist would he be if he didn't stick around to examine the results of his experiment?
He's made it most of the way across what used to be the undercity when he has to stop. It's the middle of the day, and he can see the ruined hexgate that much clearer in the rays of light trying to break through the clouds, but his body is screaming at him. He's been walking all day, not to mention dragging the hammer, and if he keeps walking he's almost afraid he'll collapse and injure himself.
So, he forces himself to take a moment to calm himself. Observe his surroundings, collect data. Find a place to sleep that isn't crawling with corpses.
This turns out to be harder than he expected: the houses are more full than the streets, with bodies doing everything from cowering in corners to assuming fighting stances to just... going about their days. The first time he opens a door only to see a domestic scene, a family sitting down for a meal, he slams it again, needing a moment to remember to breathe again. The undercity is preserved here, in a way, and it's preserved in a moment of fear but still that fear isn't all-encompassing.
He's the last visitor in the world's largest museum, its most wide-spanning zoo, only he hasn't read any of the explanatory plaques; he's just wandering around touching the things which never should have been exhibits in the first place. It's an archive without any future, one imperfect moment caught forever in amber so the hooded man can study it in perpetuity.
It's all so small now: the man, because somehow he's sure it's the same one, saved him, gave him the dead crystal and his obsession with magic, for— what? For this? There's a part of Jayce that refuses to believe he had any ill intention, though he knows it's the same part of him that made him such a failure at politicking. Still, it's convincing.
Eventually he gives up the search, more or less passing out in the first empty alleyway he sees.
Piltover's streets are much more crowded than Zaun's were, images of the latter's still-full homes worn into his mind. He doesn't have a theory as to why, really. Proximity to the hexgate, maybe. Some natural instinct of its residents, possibly: some desire to get near while things are happening, to gawk and get in the way.
Still, here too are the people captured in their everyday activities, in almost every house whose door he opens. It's nearer the hexgate when his luck finally turns, not least because the streets are packed. He almost thinks he recognizes the building he eventually takes shelter in, but forces his mind away before it starts analyzing the rotting and corrupted scraps of paper and fabric for a hint to the identity of its former inhabitants. That way lies madness, and he's had far too much of that already this past... however long it's been.
He makes the bed when he gets up, as well as he can with the sheets being half-dust, because his mother didn't raise him to be a rude houseguest, and then he wonders why he's done it. It's not as if one polite gesture will undo everything that's been done to this world, to these people he might have known.
He half-wonders if the hooded man is still observing him, if Jayce is a novel specimen with unusual behavior he can't wait to analyze. Jayce isn't a biologist, but even he knows the man has fucked up: you're not exactly supposed to interact with the wildlife you study, lest you influence their actions. Then again, maybe that's the point. Maybe he's being tested on his reactions to a novel situation. Maybe the situation's being tested on its reaction to him, like he's one of the lab rats they passed through the hexgate prototypes before exposing them to humans.
He says a word of thanks at the door of the house before moving forward, pushing through the throng of bodies and whatever else to reach the base of the hexgates. A memory sparks at the sight of the floating debris, but he shoves it aside, along with the voice in the back of his head that despite everything wants to know if this is a result they could use, if the properties of the corrupted hexgate could carry cargo with less effort than a ship or a laborer. He grabs ahold of the hunk of stone instead, pulls himself up to scale the side of his greatest and most terrible invention.
When he sees the hooded man waiting for him at the top, behind the body which can only belong to Jayce himself, he's half-tempted to ask what the results of this great experiment were.