Varandas’s nod was solemn. ‘Well enough, Korya. I am a fool but not a blind one. We are indeed a legion of despair, and here we stand with a gaping chasm between us and you. Age is a siege you have not yet experienced. Your bones remain strong, your foundations not yet undermined. The towers of belief you have raised in yourself still stand tall and proud. Certainty’s armour remains untarnished, undented.’

Burrugast added, ‘Haut spoke from a place of wounding. It was but the last of many.’

After a long moment, Haut sighed and then gestured for Korya to follow him.

They walked to the encampment’s edge, looked out eastward over the deep night’s level plain, where the stars pricked the darkness with a strange, dull light. The moon had crept into the sky just before sunset and though half the night had passed, still it clung to the horizon, swollen and the hue of copper.

‘What is happening?’ she whispered. ‘The stars…’

‘In the last days of life,’ Haut said, ‘there comes to the dying soul a single, long night. For most, it passes locked in step with the world, and come the dawn, the sleeping face is preternaturally still. Rarely does such a night impose itself on others. It is a private thing, a stretched expanse, a realm of dying wind and laboured breath.’ He faced her in sorrow. ‘Hood has invoked the Long Night, to open to our souls the passage into death. Now, this night, the stars do not sparkle, the moon does not rise. Tell me, when did you last draw breath? Blink? Whence the next beat of your heart?’

She stared at him in growing horror. ‘The gate has opened.’

‘Yes. How long shall this night be? None knows, perhaps not even Hood.’

‘This is monstrous…’

Haut rubbed at his lined face, looking old and worn out. ‘He has stopped time. Stolen life’s necessary rush, the rolling needs that burn with defiance. In all realms, life wills itself into being, plunging ever forward in the name of order, outracing the chaos of dissolution.’

She shook her head, half in disbelief, half in terror. ‘But… how vast is this… this end of time?’

‘For now, the encampment,’ Haut replied. ‘But there are ripples, unseen by us mortals, and they spread far and wide. Stirring, agitating, awakening. I would imagine,’ he mused, ‘the dead themselves now hearken to this challenge.’ He settled a hand on the old sword at his belt. ‘It seems we shall have our war after all.’