The dream that showed me my purpose.

I start walking through the darkness, following the path laid out by the aquila-stones and shielding the candle from the cold air with my hand, just as I would all of those years ago. I know that I only have to walk as far as the iron gates. That it takes ninety-nine stones to reach them. So I keep walking, and I keep the candle lit and I count my steps until I find myself looking at the iron gates. They bear the same design they always have. The iron likeness of Saint Katherine, with her burning heart in her hands.

I reach out and push against the gate as I would when I dreamed the dream before. I expect to wake, as I always did back then, but I don’t. Instead, the gate swings open and I step into the chamber beyond it. This space is vast too. Dark, just as the path to reach it was. But the darkness here recoils as I pass through it, rolling away like battlefield smoke to reveal a pedestal in the centre of the room. One that is draped with a crimson cloth, a glimmering object resting amongst the folds of the fabric.

The Shield of Saint Katherine.

My scars burn as I approach the pedestal and the shield. The surface of it is gilded. Reflective. It throws my image back at me. My uncertainty.

‘Are you ready?’

I did not see her appear. All at once Adelynn is just there, standing before me on the opposite side of the pedestal. She looks just as she did on the Last of Days, her armour scorched and battered and her scarred face blackened with blood.

‘Adelynn,’ I say, and I reach out to clasp wrists with her. But she flickers like a hololith and I realise that I am still alone. My heart thumps slowly with sorrow.

‘Are you ready?’ she asks me, again.

That sorrow wells up from my heart and spills out of me. ‘Please,’ I tell her. ‘Stop asking me that.’

Adelynn does not acknowledge my words. She does not blink or breathe. Her eyes are so flat they might as well be painted. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks.

With my scars burning and my heart aching and her eyes unblinking, I cannot help but answer her. ‘I do not know how to be!’ I shout the words, hoarse. ‘You left me the sword. Left me your legacy.’ I take a ragged breath. ‘Please, Sister, just tell me what it is I must do. Tell me how to find the Shield!’

Adelynn flickers then, like quickly turning pages. Her emerald eyes soften, and she looks at me in the way she did when she trained me. Raised me. Made me what I am.

‘Trust in yourself, Evangeline,’ she says. ‘You already have the answer.’

Around us, the chamber begins to glow as if the sun is coming up.

I shake my head. ‘What answer?’ I ask her. ‘Sister, I do not understand.’