All of it was gone.

Evander sat on a high backed chair in the centre of the room with a book resting on his lap. One hand pressed down on the cover, as though trying to keep its pages from flying open. The other hung at his side, holding a quill that dripped ink to the floor. The Choirmaster took a hesitant step into the chamber, feeling the pressure of an overwhelming psychic presence in the room that had nothing to do with Gregoras or his own powers.

‘Evander,’ hissed the Choirmaster. ‘Your eyes…’

The cryptaesthesian’s cheeks were streaked with impossible tears, and the traceries of light that filled his body shone from his eyes in a glittering sheen of organic tissue.

Evander Gregoras was no longer blind.

The cryptaesthesian did not answer, his eyes screwed tightly shut and his face contorted with the effort of holding some terrible fear at bay. His entire body was tense, and the tendons stood out as hard edges against the soft skin of neck. His hands shook on the cover of the book, a black leather-bound Oneirocritica.

‘Evander, what’s happening here?’ he asked.

‘I saw it all,’ said Gregoras, dropping the quill and placing both hands on the cover of the book. ‘It needed me to see and it gave me back my eyes! Throne, it gave me back my eyes so I could see it.’

‘See what, Evander?’ said the Choirmaster. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

‘It’s hopeless, Nemo,’ said Gregoras, shaking his head as though trying to loose some hideous memory. ‘You can’t stop it, none of us can. Not you, not me, no one!’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Nemo.

The Choirmaster took another step forward, crouching in front of Gregoras. A hint of spectral illumination, like starlight reflected on the surface of a river danced beneath his tightly closed eyelids.

‘It’s all for nothing, Nemo,’ said Gregoras, his chest heaving with sobs. ‘Everything we did, it’s all for nothing. It all stagnates. Nothing really lives, and it’s a slow death that lingers for thousands of years. Everything we strove for, everything we were promised… all a lie.’

The knuckles of his fingers were white with the effort of holding the cover of the Oneirocriticaclosed, but he removed one hand long enough to reach inside his robes to remove a small calibre snub-nosed pistol.

The Choirmaster stood erect and moved away from Gregoras as the Black Sentinels raised their rifles and took aim.

‘Put the gun down!’ barked the sergeant. ‘Put the gun down or we will shoot you dead.’

Gregoras laughed, and the pain and soul-sick loss in that sound broke the Choirmaster’s heart. What could be so terrible that it could make a man give voice to such a plaintive sound?

‘Evander,’ said the Choirmaster. ‘Whatever has happened here, we can deal with it. We can handle anything. Remember our time on the Black Ships? That boy from Forty-Three Nine? He killed almost everyone on that vessel, but we contained him. We contained him, and we can stop this, whatever it is.’

‘Stop it?’ said Gregoras. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s already happened.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘The end of everything good,’ said Gregoras, putting the pistol in his mouth.

‘No!’ shouted Nemo, but nothing could stop the cryptaesthesian from pulling the trigger.

His head bucked and a thin wisp of smoke emerged from his mouth as his jaw fell open. A line of blood ran from his nose and fell to the cover of the Oneirocritica. In death, Gregoras’s eyes opened, and the Choirmaster saw they were the colour of amber set in rose gold.

The book slid down the dead man’s knees and fell to the ground. The Choirmaster took a deep breath as he felt whatever malign presence had occupied the space between worlds begin to dissipate. He stared at the body of his once-friend, trying to imagine what might have driven so rational a man to suicide.

His blindsight was drawn to the fallen book. The droplet of blood on its cover shone with the last vital energies of the dead man, and the Choirmaster felt an immense sadness as the shimmering life-light faded to nothing.

‘What did you see, Evander?’ he said, knowing there was only one way to find out for sure and wondering if he had the strength to look.

Nemo Zhi-Meng picked up the last Oneirocriticaof Evander Gregoras and began to read.

KAI FOLLOWED THE Outcast Dead as they entered the Temple of Woe, feeling the weight of grief and guilt that pervaded the air like invisible smoke. Like the outside façade, the interior of the building was also embellished with funereal statuary depicting mourning in all its varied forms: wailing mourners, deathbed vigils, raucous wakes and dignified farewells. Torches hanging from iron sconces filled the temple with a warm glow, and a circular rim of what had once been the cog-toothed wheel of some enormous Mechanicum war-engine now served as a hanging bed for hundreds of tallow candles.

Groups of mourners gathered in sombre groups on wooden benches, the lucky ones whose turn had come to bring their dead inside. People looked up as they entered, some staring in amazement, others too wrapped in their grief to pay them more than a cursory glance. A man and a woman wept beside a body that lay at the foot of a polished black statue of a faceless, kneeling angel. A faint black haze clung to the sweeps and curves of the angel’s wings, and though it had no features carved into its head, Kai sensed something behind that unfinished surface, like a face half-glimpsed in the shadows.

‘What is it?’ he asked, knowing Atharva was staring at him and would understand his meaning.

‘I suspect it is not one thing, but many,’ said Atharva. ‘The Great Ocean is a reflection of this world, and as the alchemists of old knew: as above, so below. You cannot vent so much grief in one place without attracting the attention of something from beyond the veil.’

‘Whatever it is it feels dangerous,’ said Kai. ‘And… hungry.’

‘An apt term,’ nodded Atharva. ‘And you are right to believe it is dangerous.’

Fear touched Kai, and he said, ‘Throne, should we warn these people to get out!’

Atharva laughed and shook his head. ‘There is no need, Kai. Its power is not so great that it can escape the prison of stone in which it currently resides.’

‘You like my statues?’ said the custodian of the Temple of Woe, closing the doors and coming to join them.

‘They are magnificent,’ said Kai. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘I did not getthem anywhere, I carved them myself,’ said the man, holding out his hand. ‘I am Palladis Novandio and you are welcome here. All of you.’

Kai shook the proffered hand, trying to hide his discomfort as he felt the sharp stab of the man’s grief and guilt.

‘It is a mausoleum,’ said Tagore. ‘Why do you gather so much death in one place?’

‘They are images of aversion,’ said Palladis.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Subha.

‘By gathering so many images of death and grief in one place, you rob them of their sorrow,’ said Kai with sudden insight.

‘Exactly so,’ said Palladis. ‘And by honouring death, we keep it at bay.’

‘We bring warriors who have walked the Crimson Path,’ said Tagore. ‘Their mortal remains are not for the scavenger or the vulture to dishonour. We were told you had an incinerator here.’

‘We do indeed,’ said Palladis, pointing to a square arch at the rear of the structure. Kai felt the finality that existed beyond that door, a barrier that couldn’t quite keep the smell of burnt flesh from permeating the air of the temple.

‘We have need of it,’ said Atharva.

‘It is at your disposal,’ said Palladis, with a respectful bow.

Kai watched as the Outcast Dead lifted their fallen brothers between them like enormous pallbearers, the World Eaters bearing Gythua, Atharva and Severian hoisting Argentus Kiron to their shoulders.