The gate looks different to how I have seen it in my dreams. It is heavier, and thicker. Made from two solid pieces of black iron. Saint Katherine is still sculpted there, but she is not beneficent. The saint is baleful, her eyes cut from the same red stones as her fiery heart. She is surrounded by ten concentric circles of prayer words in the old script. The same words are repeated in a half-circle at the foot of the gate, inlaid into the stone in silver. The loop of the door is a coil of thorns. All cutting edges.

‘That’s a blood-lock,’ Ravara says. ‘An old one. It will only open to those it was made for.’

‘But that is not me,’ I reply. ‘It can’t be.’

‘Perhaps it is not so much the blood it requires, but faith.’ Silvera steps forward and gazes up at the gate. At the script surrounding Saint Katherine. ‘“Blessed be those who enter”,’ he says. ‘It is written to seem like a benediction, but perhaps it is a requirement.’

Silvera looks at me truly for the first time. His pale eyes are deep-set and rheumy, but I can still catch sight of flecks of gold amid the grey of them.

‘Perhaps it means that only one who is blessed can open it,’ he says.

I nod slowly.

‘Are you ready?’ Ravara asks, as I unbuckle my gauntlet and remove it.

It feels strange hearing that question in a voice other than Adelynn’s. Strange enough that I cannot help but hesitate. I turn and look back at my Sisters to see that they are all watching me intently. Some are holding positions, their bolters raised on Elivia’s order. Some are making the sign of the aquila. Some are weeping silently. Only one stands out amongst the rest. Ashava is not intent, or weeping. She is smiling, a small, sad smile.

Go, she mouths to me.

I nod to her before I can change my mind, and turn back to face the door.

‘I am ready,’ I say.

Despite there being over two hundred and fifty people in the vast hall, not a single soul speaks a word as I step up to the door and take up the loop, the thorns immediately puncturing my skin. Compared to the burning of my scars, I barely feel it at all. There is a grinding all around me. Dust falls in columns. And then, slowly but surely, the gate begins to open. Golden light spills out through the widening gap between the dark iron slabs, faint at first, but growing brighter.