‘Why?’ the younger me asks.

My father nods out towards the distant mountain range. I can see the tiny shape of a single bird approaching through the storm. I shouldn’t be able to see it, because it is still dark, but the bird bears its own light like the lantern in my hand does. Its feathers burn brightly against the violet thunderheads and pre-dawn shadows. It sheds them with every beat of its wings, leaving a glittering trail in its wake.

‘She is returning to the spire,’ he says. ‘Dawnrise will follow soon after.’

‘How do you know?’ the younger me asks. ‘What if dawnrise never comes, and the night stays in its place?’

My father smiles and looks at the younger me with patience.

‘Dawnrise will come,’ he says. ‘It is inevitable. For there to be such a thing as night, there must be a day, after all. You just have to wait.’

The younger me shakes her head. ‘But I am afraid,’ she says, with the sort of honesty that I have long since left behind. ‘It has been dark for so long.’

My father leans his cane against the tower wall and picks up the younger me, holding her up so that she can better see the sky beyond. I clearly see the pain in his face as he does it.

‘Follow the eagle ablaze, Ahri,’ he says, and points. ‘You will see. The light will not be far behind, and it will burn all of the shadows away.’

I do see it, then. A blinding golden light behind the eagle that fills the sky, edge to edge. It banishes the storm with ease. It makes my eyes well with tears. It is more than gold, really. More than light.

It is divine.

The light rolls onwards with the eagle at its heart until it is all I can see. Until I am surrounded by light and heat and an incredible warmth, not just on my skin, but my soul. Everything else starts to bleed away in the face of it. My father’s birds go first, then the spire tower and the mountains. The younger me disappears too, leaving Sofika and I standing with my father, bathed in that divine, golden light.

‘Follow the eagle, Ahri,’ my father says again, and this time I could swear that he is speaking to the now-me, and that he sees me just as clearly as I do him, but then the eagle vanishes and so does my father, and I am returned in a ­dizzying instant to the Fortress Meridia.

Sofika lets her hands fall from my face, slowly. They are so cold that it feels as though they leave prints.

‘You have not dreamed of anything but Hellebore for months,’ Sofika says, as blood runs slowly from her nose. ‘About the Resonance, and the Conduit. About the monster in the serpent’s mask.’

I can’t help but think of it as I get to my feet and pick up a knot of medicae cotton from a silvered tray. Of finally uncovering the ancient chamber buried beneath Hellebore’s surface, only to find a monster already waiting there, intent on using it for himself. An echo of the oldest war, clad in cobalt battleplate and a serpent’s mask. Sorcerer. Traitor.