Kalam made his way in a steady jog across a stone-littered depression where a half-dozen ships – the wood petrified and looking like grey bones in the gloom – had scattered their remnants in the hard-packed clay. The Whirlwind had lifted the mantle of sands to reveal Raraku’s prehistory, the long-lost civilizations that had known only darkness for millennia. The scene was vaguely disturbing, as if whispering back to the nightmares that had plagued his sleep.

And that damned song.

The bones of sea-creatures crunched underfoot as the assassin continued on. There was no wind, the air almost preternatural in its stillness. Two hundred paces ahead, the land rose once more, climbing to an ancient, crumbled causeway. A glance up to the ridge froze Kalam in his tracks. He dropped low, hands closing on the grips of his long-knives.

A column of soldiers was walking along the causeway. Helmed heads lowered, burdened with wounded comrades, pikes wavering and glinting in the grainy darkness.

Kalam judged their numbers as close to six hundred. A third of the way along the column rose a standard. Affixed to the top of the pole was a human ribcage, the ribs bound together by leather strips, in which two skulls had been placed. Antlers rode the shaft all the way down to the bearer’s pallid hands.

The soldiers marched in silence.

Hood’s breath. They’re ghosts.

The assassin slowly straightened. Strode forward. He ascended the slope until he stood, like someone driven to the roadside by the army’s passage, whilst the soldiers shambled past – those on his side close enough to reach out and touch, were they flesh and blood.

‘He walks up from the sea.’

Kalam started. An unknown language, yet he understood it. A glance back – and the depression he had just crossed was filled with shimmering water. Five ships rode low in the waters a hundred sweeps of the oar offshore, three of them in flames, shedding ashes and wreckage as they drifted. Of the remaining two, one was fast sinking, whilst the last seemed lifeless, bodies visible on its deck and in the rigging.

‘A soldier.’

‘A killer.’

‘Too many spectres on this road, friends. Are we not haunted enough?’

‘Aye, Dessimbelackis throws endless legions at us, and no matter how many we slaughter, the First Emperor finds more.’

‘Not true, Kullsan. Five of the Seven Protectors are no more. Does that mean nothing? And the sixth will not recover, now that we have banished the black beast itself.’

‘I wonder, did we indeed drive it from this realm?’

‘If the Nameless Ones speak true, then yes—’

‘Your question, Kullsan, confuses me. Are we not marching from the city? Were we not just victorious?’

The conversation had begun to fade as the soldiers who had been speaking marched onward, but Kalam heard the doubting Kullsan’s reply: ‘Then why is our road lined with ghosts, Erethal?’

More importantly, Kalam added to himself, why is mine?