Somehow, Orlen hung on. Below him, insects were pouring into the drain he had vacated. So many pressed in at once that they piled in a drift about the drain’s entrance, scrabbling over one another in a clicking mass of waving antennae and flailing legs. Many didn’t make it, shrivelling and squealing as the last rays of daylight found them and pinned them in place. Soon, a desiccated carpet of lifeless husks covered the ground. Then came bigger creatures, greenskins in black robes and pointed hoods. They ran, faces grim as they cast hateful glances up at the open sky. Orlen sensed the panic that came off them in waves. They had taken his place, he realised. Now it was these sharp-fanged monsters that fled into the shadows for fear of what might hunt them. The greenskins snarled, jabbering in fear at the sight of the drain clogged with insect corpses. They dropped to their hands and knees and dug madly, scooping fistfuls of crunching matter out of the way. They fought and pushed and clawed at one another to go first, one of them driving a blade into another’s throat and leaving him to thrash and bleed into stillness amidst the dead insects. Like maggots vanishing into an open wound, the creatures squirmed into the storm drain and were gone. Orlen felt the rays of evening light bathe his skin, and the feeling brought forth a vague recollection of a time before madness, and terror, and pain. He remembered a family, waiting for him in Hammerhal Aqsha, and tears spilled from his deep-shadowed eyes at the thought that perhaps, against all the odds, he might live to see them again. He looked up and saw clouds streaked salmon pink and pale grey. He saw the flanks of the volcanoes limned with the golden light of Hysh as the stately dance of the heavens swept it from view and the first stars of night flickered into being.

True night, natural night, with no sign of the monstrous moon that had hung above the city for so long.

Orlen looked down from his vantage point for a long time, until he was absolutely sure that nothing was moving. Then, at last, as the night wind rose and began gently to sweep the insect corpses across the cobbles with a susurrus whisper, Orlen scrambled down from his perch.

He was hungry, and exhausted, and every part of him hurt. But he had a family to return to. A life.

Stepping gingerly, jumping at every sound of movement from the dead city around him, Orlen began the long trudge homewards.