The devotee steps towards me, and I close my eyes, though my mind is alight with DiCrimio’s questions, and with my answer. It was the truth, but was it enough? The devotee’s ash-stained fingers brush over my eyelids. Over my mark. I feel her fingertips linger there for less than a heartbeat, before her hands fall away. I open my eyes and realise that the devotee is shaking from head to toe under her robes and her parchment veil. I catch the sounds of whispered breathing. Of weeping.

‘And under His sight, you take this oath,’ DiCrimio says, drawing my attention from the trembling devotee.

‘To remain unbroken,’ I say. ‘Even unto death.’

DiCrimio’s eyes hiss and I see the intersecting lenses turn once more. Wheels within wheels.

‘Even unto death,’ he says.

As Elivia and I make to leave the memorial hall and join our Sisters, we are approached by a lone figure who did not partake in the blessing, but who must have been watching it unfold from the hall’s shadowed edges. The woman is not clad in the robes or vestments of the Faith, but in blue cloth and overlapping silvered plate that must have been made for her, and her alone. Her posture is scholam-straight, her hair dark and long and loosely curly, bound up into a topknot using a series of fine silver rings. I could not begin to guess her age. Her copper-coloured skin is only faintly lined around the eyes, and her amber eyes are as sharp as the twin swords she wears at her hip. The woman wears no icons save for a discreet enamel clasp affixed to the inside edge of her shoulder guard. As she reaches us and nods her head in greeting I see that the enamel clasp is wrought in the shape of a tri-barred ‘I’, surrounded by a halo of inward-facing blades.

An inquisitor, then.

‘Canoness Elivia,’ the woman says, before looking to me. There is a momentary flicker in her eyes as they meet mine. ‘Sister Evangeline. My name is Ahri Ravara, of the Ordo Hereticus.’

Unease sets in at Ravara’s words. At the mention of her ordo. I wonder if this is the test I am yet to face. If I failed when I spoke plainly to DiCrimio upon the chancel. If I am to be denounced. Marked as a witch, under the God-Emperor’s skies.

‘What do you want, inquisitor?’ Elivia asks. Her tone is firm. Guarded.

‘Merely an introduction,’ Ravara replies. ‘My retinue and I will be accompanying you beyond the Rift to Dimmamar.’

Elivia shakes her head, her expression unchanged. ‘Our duty is one laid down by the God-Emperor Himself,’ she says. ‘It is prophecy. Our mission is sanctioned and sanctified. What possible cause might you have to accompany us?’

‘Because of my dreams,’ Ravara says, patient where Elivia is not. ‘Since I was a child I have seen what is to come.’