He startles awake and looks up at me. Efrayl was an uphive noble’s house medicae before I took him into my service. He is tall and thin and greying, with expensive haptics laid into the fingers of his right hand that he has a habit of clicking against one another when he talks.

‘What are you doing sleeping here?’ I ask him.

‘Waiting for you,’ Efrayl says, getting to his feet.

Efrayl is still talking, but I’m not listening. All that I can hear is my pulse rushing in my ears because now that the medic is standing I can see the blood spattered on his apron. Dark, old blood.

Sofika’s blood.

I turn to the door and give my clearance. The locks disengage and the lumen over the door blinks from red to green.

‘Inquisitor,’ Efrayl says, urgently. ‘Lord, please. Wait.’

I ignore him and rush inside, convinced that I will see Sofika’s machine sitting empty. That I will have lost her for good this time. But the machine isn’t empty. Sofika is still there, coiled in its cables. She doesn’t wake at the sound of me approaching. Her skin is pale as mountain snow.

‘Sofi,’ I say softly.

She is so still. I put my hand out and touch her face and say her name again, and only then does she stir. Only then does she raise her head and look at me. Her eyes are artificially dark, the pupils swollen to swallow the blue. I can’t help but think of Thul’s wretched choir of dreamers.

‘Ahri,’ she says. ‘You were gone so long.’

I let my hand fall away. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Did you find her?’ Sofika asks. ‘The eagle, ablaze?’

I nod.

Sofika’s face lights with a broad smile. ‘You did?’

‘I did,’ I tell her, smiling too, despite myself. ‘Now all we need to do is follow her.’

Sofika nods, a lolling motion.

‘We will find the Conduit,’ I say. ‘You will see the Rebirth, just as I promised.’

She blinks slowly, her eyes misted by distance.

‘Inquisitor, please,’ Efrayl says, from behind me. ‘You must let her rest.’

I hold my hand up and Efrayl falls quiet as Sofika stirs again.

‘Ahri,’ she says.

‘Yes.’

‘You were gone so long,’ she says, as if I have only just arrived.

It takes me a moment to answer her.

‘I know,’ I tell her, softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Have you come to see them?’ she asks, her words blurred by sleep and whatever Efrayl has given her.

‘See who?’

She smiles absently and I realise that she isn’t looking at me, really. She is looking through me. ‘The stars,’ she says. ‘It feels as though you can see them all from here.’