They were the learned. Their blood was already flowing freely – we were at least spared the horror of the cutting, although that thought itself was a kind of horror. The blood from the two boys channelled unnaturally into the jungle to join the ritual.

At the base of Patrik’s crucifix was one of his notebooks, splayed but otherwise untouched. In an inexplicable moment I picked it up and tucked it back into the boy’s pocket. This simple, foolish act brought forth deep, wracking sobs from my night-brother and me. We wept for the little boy from whom we had learned so much.

Christophor roared at the jungle. He threw his arms wide and offered himself to the beast Berith. There was no will left in him, not after seeing Victor like that. But the claws didn’t come for him. The eyes just watched on.

‘It can taste your failure,’ Olesca. ‘It tastes a broken man, at war with himself.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said under my breath, though the words were as thunderous as any in that strange place. We weren’t at war with each other. If anything, my night-brother and I had never been so close; in purpose, in experience, in feeling.

‘It’s not true!’ I said again. This time, I plunged further into the jungle and it was Christophor who struggled to keep up.

He called my name, sometimes sounding close behind me, sometimes miles distant. I ran as best I could, hurdling roots and ducking branches and ignoring anything that grasped or swatted at me. I didn’t take the obvious path or the easy route. That was something I’d done too often, before coming to Drekenford. I thought of all the things I’d seen and done, and all the people I’d spoken to in the small southern town. Marcus, Mr Hennig, Patrik, and of course Rebecca. The woman I’d come to love, wrongly charged with witchcraft.

‘The woman you – and you alone – love,’ Olesca said, as if he were hearing my thoughts.

Then suddenly we were out of the jungle. Ahead, a desert. An arid, dusty wasteland bereft of life or hope. The fate that awaited the world, north and south, Reikova and the tribes. The only break from that desolate nothing was a huge five-pointed star of Berith, burned and blackened on the ground. At its centre was a dome of brittle, dead thorns.

I felt a moment of vertigo as, once I’d seen that dome, no matter where I turned it was there. Olesca was inside.

I saw the white of his eyes first. They glittered between the lattice of lifeless brambles. But they didn’t stop moving. Frantic, juddering movements. A songbird caught in a cage. I hoped Olesca wouldn’t sing. Even at such a time, I remembered the effect the boy’s voice had on Christophor. Instead, I heard Olesca’s fingers raking the wall of the dome. I tried to look away again, back to the jungle, but it was now far behind us.