She was crucified through her feet and wrists with large square-headed nails. Her body sagged with its own weight. Beneath her was the word Innocent, scorched in scratchy letters into a wooden board.

Christophor started towards her, and the jungle around him shook. The vines and their leaves parted briefly. He saw a shadow there, a shadow without edges, a deepening of the darkness that pulled at him before it was gone. He was closer to the crucifix now. Louisa wasn’t breathing. He hoped there was some mercy in that, but he was under no illusion that the girl had been spared any suffering. The urge to help her was strong, regardless, and he raised a hand.

A snarl came from the jungle, and black claws lashed out at Christophor; claws the size of scythes. He fell back, hitting the marshy ground hard, knocking the wind from him. The giant scaled arm struggled and thrashed against the jungle – its clawed hand somehow wickedly sharp and yet not entirely substantial. A shadow with a keen edge, but one that frayed as it met the world. Its frustration filled the air, until it began to withdraw back into the jungle.

Christophor raised himself on his elbows, breathing hard, in time to see a claw flick out at the last – but not towards him. It nicked Louisa’s throat. A small, quick movement for such a huge blade, like the flicker of a serpent’s tongue. When nothing happened at first, Christophor wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing, arm and claw and all.

But then the blood came.

It burst forth like a broken dam, running over the cliff of Louisa’s jaw, down past her ears, through her hair and onto the waiting ground beneath. There, it struck like thunder and the whole jungle shuddered once more.

‘Welcome, brothers Morden,’ Olesca said, his voice coming from everywhere.

*

I found myself standing there, in that impossible jungle, gazing at my night-brother as he got to his feet. He did not see me. Instead, his attention was on the blood of the innocent, of Louisa, and what it meant: the final stage of the Ritual of Berith had begun. This was the first of three bloodlettings. Three streams of blood, all leading to a last site where the beast would break free into our world. All this I knew, because he knew.

Perhaps there was still time to stop it. He believed there was. I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. I wasn’t even supposed to be there; I lived in the day, under the light of the sun, not in this hellish night.

Despite what he had just witnessed, Christophor left the clearing and entered the jungle again. With no other option, I did the same.

‘Neither of you can save the learned,’ Olesca boomed from somewhere in the jungle, ‘as you cannot save yourselves.’ The clouds responded in kind, but we both kept our silence. We knew better than that.

I pushed my way through wet, cloying leaves and stepped over thick, exposed roots. The air was so heavy with moisture I was soaked in moments, as if I’d been caught in a hot summer downpour. I gave up wiping my forehead after the third or fourth time, and just blinked through the sweat. I managed to catch the occasional glimpse of Christophor, fifty or so feet away, who was similarly struggling to make any real progress… though progress to where, or what, I didn’t know.