The unfaithful lose sight of themselves

The sword shrivels to flakes of snow

The law devours its history

The stone moves on water

The broken heart bleeds gold

Christophor’s notations appeared to largely refer to this list. From what I could tell, he was trying to determine which of these cryptic notations might correspond to events that had taken place already, and which were still to come. I wondered what he expected might happen were they all to occur. Just then I felt compelled to turn the page, and there I found my answer.

Both pages were taken with a work of art the likes of which I had never seen. There was no colour, and yet the extent and vivid nature of the catastrophe was undeniable. Mountains had crumbled, seas boiled, where men might have stood there were beasts and, worse still, skeletons made to appear as men. The sun and moon collided in a sky that burned. In every shadow was a demonic face that watched on with glee. The more I looked the more horrors I found, but also the more certain I was that this could not come to pass. Nothing so heinous, so all encompassing, could occur in our world. But then I saw her. I saw Cornet Pitzmun.

Despite her being an acquaintance of my night-brother, I recognised her immediately. A young face, a woman’s face, small but so different to the skeletal figures she was addressing from her horse. She held aloft her sword, not to strike them down, it appeared to me, but to rally them. Cornet Pitzmun. A woman that, despite conversing with him normally enough, haunted my night-brother in visions of a similarly apocalyptic kind.

Once I knew what I was looking for, it wasn’t so difficult to find the other Horsemen.

The foreigner on his white horse. The quartermaster counting his silver. And the hooded figure driving a cart that overflowed with corpses. Their eyes, the eyes of the dead, they were all empty.

I closed the book and stumbled back onto the bed. My mouth was dry and remained so despite my efforts with wine.

‘Alexsander.’

My name, whispered, swirling about the walls and the ceiling until it came to rest on the desk. I glanced at the door but knew it was as I’d left it: locked. The window was closed. I was imagining things. Was that so hard to believe, after seeing such a picture? What sane person wouldn’t be so affected?

‘Alexsander.’

More insistent, urgent, but high pitched and oddly stressed: ahLEXsanDER.

‘Hello?’ I said, glancing to the door, and then back to the desk. I felt a heat at my forehead. In truth, I did not feel myself at all. I should have left such things to my night-brother, should have washed and got into bed.

But I felt compelled to continue, compelled to look at Christophor’s notes. Many words were scrawled in a poorer hand than was usual for him. Others were crossed out. Small drawings or illustrations peppered the pages, but I understood these even less. Some words appeared more than once. It was that repetition that made certainty possible.