I turn away from my Sisters and look out at the gathered crowd and the face of Dimmamar beyond it. The cathedral world does not just smell like home, but looks like it too. The sky is stormy in the way that spire worlds often are. Heavy and purpled and illuminated by occasional arcs of lightning. The gothic spires beyond the inner walls are made from marble and black iron and grey stone, so tall that they disappear into the thunderheads. Thousands of tiny lights glitter across the surface of the spires between the ancient statues of saviours and saints, and the vast banners crease in the high winds, cracking and snapping like the wings of colossal birds.

Are you ready?

Adelynn’s voice is so close and so real that I almost turn to look for her. That I almost answer her. But of course she isn’t here. She cannot hear me. So I give my answer in the only way I can.

By stepping out onto the lander’s ramp.

As soon as I set foot into Dimmamar’s grey daylight, the wailing of the crowd pitches upwards and takes the form of a word. A name.

Evangeline.

It hits me like a wave. Like a rush of heat from a fire. It steals the air from my lungs. It is an effort to make my way down the ramp to where Elivia and Ravara wait. When I reach them, Elivia smiles, but Ravara does not. She merely nods. Then the three of us approach the figures waiting on the greeting drape together. As we draw close, the taller of the two men holds up his hand. The wailing stops almost immediately, though the crowd could not have hoped to see him do it. The man is strangely ageless, his skin even and unscarred and his eyes as dark as his neatly parted hair.

‘Canoness Elivia,’ he says, looking to each of them in turn. ‘Inquisitor Ravara. I am Judicale Castanne, cardinal-principal of the south-western cathedral province.’

Elivia makes the aquila sign. Ravara nods. Castanne’s eyes slide away from them, settling on me. His eyes linger on mine for a moment. On my marks. I catch the glittering of tears within the darkness of them.

‘You are Sister Evangeline,’ he says softly. ‘Then it is true.’

‘Was there any doubt?’ Elivia asks flatly.

The man beside Castanne bows his head at her words. He is not ageless, but aged. What remains of his hair is thin and grey, and his face is weather-lined and weather-tanned, his silver eyes set deeply in their sockets. Unlike Castanne, nothing about this man matches the richness of his robes. And unlike Castanne, he cannot look me in the eyes at all.

‘My apologies, Canoness,’ he says. ‘Blessings have been few and far between since the opening of the dread scar. We are not doubting, but merely gladdened.’

Elivia remains unmoved. ‘And you are?’