Even more of those things crawl their way out of what was once the Navigator but is now a doorway. Too many to count. Too many to kill. My threat-sense is useless. Overwhelmed. Over the gunfire and whispers, I hear Yumia cry out as one of the abominations catches her out of the air. Zoric turns and fires on it, blasting chunks of glass from its head and torso. The creature staggers under the assault, and then it falls, Yumia still snarled in its claws. Lost to the melee.

‘Mia!’ Zoric roars.

He tries to shoot his way through to her. The Valedictor goes off four times in quick succession, and then stops. I can’t see him any more through the crowd.

‘Not here,’ I say, breathless. ‘We don’t. Die. Here.’

I push forwards, cutting down another of the abominations by severing its head. It cuts me back along my left arm as it falls, its claws carving easily through my armour plating and into my arm beneath it. Blood wells up fast and hot, spilling down my arm and making my hand slick on my sabre’s hilt. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I banish the next creature with a single, graceless horizontal blow that bisects it at the waist. The two halves of the thing fall away and I leap through them to strike at a third. My main-hand sabre cuts deep and sticks hard in the creature’s torso, rattling my injured arm to the shoulder. It arrests my momentum and unbalances me, but I am already cutting downwards with my second sword for the follow-up strike. The killing cut of the sword-song. The blade lands, following the path of my main-hand sword.

But it doesn’t go through.

The second sword sticks beside the first, deep in the creature’s glass core. The abomination gurgles liquid silver from its lamprey mouth and lashes out in response. Its claws punch through my armour and stick, too. Stick into me. My world narrows like a closing iris as the creature pulls its claws free again with a welter of blood. It reels backwards, my blades still lodged in its chest. I try to go after it, but I can’t. Instead I crash to my knees amid the ruin, barely able to breathe. Barely able to see. Bleeding out slowly, surrounded by whispers and wickedness and an expanse of fractured glass.

Just like Hellebore.

A shadow falls over me and I look up, determined to look my death in the eyes. But I don’t see the abomination with its lamprey mouth and its hooked, bloody claws. I see a figure wearing a blue tunic, and trousers braided with bronze cord. His golden eyes flicker like candles caught in cold air.

‘Not here,’ my father says. ‘This is not the place.’