Valkyrie backed up until she was beside Skulduggery. “What are we seeing?”

“The future,” he said slowly.

The images cleared and a new figure drifted into being. Valkyrie saw herself, a few years older than she was now.

The Valkyrie in the steam was taller, and her bare arms were lean and muscled, like Tanith’s. A tattoo swirled from her left shoulder to her elbow and she wore a black metal gauntlet on her right hand. Her legs were strong, the black trousers clinging to them. Her boots were scuffed, splattered with blood.

“I’ve seen this,” the Valkyrie in the steam said, her dark hair whipping across her face. “I was watching from…” She turned her head and looked straight at where Valkyrie was standing. “…there.”

Valkyrie couldn’t move.

“This is where it happens,” her older self continued, sadness in her voice.

“Stephanie!”

Two people, in the distance, sprinting this way. The older Valkyrie shook her head slowly. “Please don’t make me watch it again.”

As if her prayer was answered, the older Valkyrie disappeared, the two people came closer and Valkyrie’s heart plummeted. Desmond and Melissa Edgley ran through the steam.

Skulduggery held her back against the wall. “This hasn’t happened yet,” he reminded her quietly.

Her parents stopped running and looked around, and the dark figure Valkyrie had glimpsed earlier stepped out behind them.

“No!” Valkyrie screamed and Skulduggery held her tighter as they watched her parents turn.

“Darquesse,” Finbar whispered.

The shadow called Darquesse raised her arm and black flame engulfed the steam images of Valkyrie’s parents, turning them to ash before they could even scream their agony.

Valkyrie went cold as a fresh billow of steam took away the image. The sound faded and the steam became clouds. Valkyrie looked down and saw a city below her.

A wave of vertigo hit and she staggered, standing on nothing but air, miles above the ground, but beneath the city she glimpsed the metal grille of the Chamber. She took a breath and willed herself not to throw up. They were in the same room. They hadn’t moved. They were not standing in mid-air.

There was a blackness spreading across the city and engulfing the surrounding countryside, as if the grass and the trees were suddenly dying, as if all life was being snuffed out in a wave that spread out and just kept on spreading. Within seconds the land beneath them was dead.

Then the city went away and they were in the Chamber, and the steam was quickly dispersing. Valkyrie realised for the first time that her face was wet with sweat and her hair clung to her scalp.

Cassandra walked forward, shaking the water off the yellow umbrella. “This is the future as I have seen it,” she said. “But the future can be changed. Come. You look like you could do with a glass of water.”