And then the roaring stops, and the shaking with it. There is a moment where all is silent, save for breathing. Then people begin to cough and cry out for one another.

‘Eva!’ Ashava shouts.

‘I am here,’ I reply, as one by one the Unbroken Vow’s overhead lumens flicker back on, illuminating the chamber once more to reveal the deep cracks crazing their way up the walls. The clouds of dust, spiralling in the air.

And the three jagged spars of shipsteel that have buried themselves deeply in the deck around me, missing Kati and me by inches.

‘Blood and tears,’ Qi-Oh says, putting her fingertips to one of the pieces of twisted metal. It is almost as long as she is tall. ‘That was close.’

I look up at the Vow’s vaulted ceiling, and the ragged hole that remains of one of the supporting arches. Dust spirals outwards from it like an exhaled breath. I release my hold on Kati.

‘Are you hurt?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head, her eyes wide. I get to my feet and bring her with me, away from the site of the collapse. Kati stays in my shadow, one hand snarled tightly in my vestments. Around us, those who can are stirring. Sitting up, or getting to their feet. Others stay where they have fallen, their bodies broken open in the collapse.

Qi-Oh spits on the deck, her skin and hair greyed with dust. ‘That felt like an exit.’

‘Like an ending,’ Ashava says.

The vox-emitters crackle, then, for the first time in days. A sound emits over them. The clear and bright pealing of the ship’s bells fills the chamber. Everyone stops and looks and counts each ringing, and when it stops, the people around us begin to murmur and smile and embrace one another.

‘Twelve bells,’ Ashava says.

‘Taken in threes,’ Qi-Oh finishes.

I am still looking up at the emitter, though it has fallen silent now.

‘We found our way out,’ I say. ‘That was the last jump.’

‘The miracle.’

I look down at Kati. She is still clinging to my vestments.

‘They said you would deliver us from darkness,’ she says. ‘That it would be a miracle.’

I make to speak, to tell this child who wears my scars by choice that she is wrong, but my words are stolen from me by another sound. Not a roaring. Not a devil’s choir, but a swelling murmur that steals between the people in the chamber like smoke.

Miracle. It is a miracle.

Those who can stand, do. Those who cannot, crawl or drag themselves closer. They crowd around me, putting themselves between me and my Sisters. Qi-Oh starts forward, but Ashava holds her back as the crowd close around me. As they reach for me, fingertips brushing against my greaves and trailing across the edges of my vestments.

Evangeline, they say. Evangeline.