‘Ahri Ravara,’ I say. ‘Clearance code, nightsky.’

The cogitator churns and ticks over, and then the lumen flicks from red to green and the heavy door slides open. The room inside is circular, with the same obsidian walls and floor as the rest of Meridia. In here, though, it is not dawnrise. It is a permanent nightscape, with hundreds of tiny string-lumens hanging in loops and whorls against the black stone like stars against the void. Sofika stirs as I cross the room and take the same seat I always take. A simple wooden stool. I lace my hands in my lap.

‘It looks like a good evening, Sofika,’ I say.

‘It is,’ she replies absently. ‘With such bright stars.’

I look up at her then. At my confessor, and my dream-taker. My loyal interrogator of fifteen years’ service. My Sofika.

Or what remains of her.

Sofika Vorros is held upright, connected by tubes and braces and cables to the support system built around her. Her legs are gone, as is most of her body below the abdomen. A set of bellows breathes for her, and machines pump a constant supply of blood and fluids around what remains of her body. Sofika’s robes hang from her, and her cheeks have lost their colour. Her fair hair has thinned and fallen out in clumps, and there is a distance in her eyes, that fogs the mountain-sky blue of them. One thing hasn’t changed, though. She still smiles at the sight of me.

‘More dreams?’ Sofika asks.

‘Aren’t there always,’ I reply.

She nods. The movement is diminished by her connection to the machine that has kept her from dying since Hellebore, months ago.

‘Let me see,’ Sofika says, and she reaches out and puts both of her thin, cold hands on my face.

The connection is instant, and strong. Sofika’s gifts were the only part of her not to suffer on Hellebore. Instead, they grow stronger with every passing day. With every moment that Sofika spends in the machine. Her power washes over me like a storm surge, and it feels as though I have lost my balance. Like floating and sinking, all at once. The chamber and the false nightscape and Sofika’s machine bleed away, and the world upends and inverts. I taste iron and ice, and cannot help but blink reflexively.

When I open my eyes again, it is to another vaulted hallway. Not Meridia. This one is lit by flickering candles. Hundreds of them. Thousands, perhaps. The floor and the walls are made from a pale, veined stone, the pieces crazed together like pottery shards. The sound of a storm echoes through the hallway, sending a bitter wind to pull insistently at the candle flames, and at the light of the lantern in my hand.

‘This place…’ Sofika says.

I glance at her. As always, Sofika is whole again in the dreamscape. She is clad in lightweight, flexible armour like mine, her pale hair bound with a series of gold cuffs. She carries not a sword, but a bladed polearm that she leans on like a staff. Her body is rounded and well-muscled and her blue eyes are pin-sharp and keen. It is how she looks when I remember her. How she looked on the day that she should have died.