‘I know,’ I tell them. ‘And if it does collapse then we must be ready to endure it. To have the cascade shatter against our bolters and blades. Be vigilant, Sisters. Be strong, for those who cannot.’

‘Aye, Sister Superior,’ they say in sequence until the connection breaks down and their voices are swallowed up by static. That has been the case for days, too. The vox. The lumens. The air purification. Just like the crew, everything is faltering in the face of prolonged exposure to the Great Rift.

I sever the vox-link, and Ashava and I set to walking again under that wavering zoetrope light. The spinal corridor is no longer a hectic, noisy press. The crew we do see are few and far between. They hurry by with their heads bowed and their eyes downturned, going about their work without a word or a song, just like the cherubim.

‘They look exhausted,’ Ashava observes. ‘As though they are sleeping as little as we are.’

I nod. Since entering the Rift we have patrolled relentlessly. That much I am used to. It is our calling to endure. To fight for days without respite or relief. To suffer. It is not so much the lack of sleep I find exhausting, but the act of sleep itself.

‘The darkness is close enough as it is without welcoming it by closing your eyes,’ I say.

‘Then you have dreamed badly, too?’ Ashava asks.

I glance at her. ‘Have you?’

She nods. ‘Of the Last of Days,’ she says. ‘Of watching Isidora burn. Of lying flat on my back and listening to the greater daemon laugh.’ She shakes her head. ‘Each time I hope to dream differently. I hope to cut the greater daemon down, or slip its grasp, but it always plays out the same.’

‘We cannot go back,’ I say. ‘Only onwards.’

Ashava laughs at me, and for a moment it feels as though there is light in the corridor, after all.

‘You think yourself unlike Adelynn,’ she says with a smile. ‘But sometimes you might as well be a mirror. She would always offer my own words back to me, too.’

‘I know,’ I say, and I cannot help smiling too. ‘She would do the same to me. Especially if it meant learning a lesson.’

‘Because often you already have the answer you seek,’ Ashava says, and I find myself reliving all the times my mentor spoke those words to me. In the cold marble grounds of the Convent Sanctorum, and under the stained glass and statues lining its great halls. Aboard ships and in warzones.

And, of course, in the dream that led us here.

‘And what of your dreams?’ Ashava asks, as if she knows my thoughts. ‘Have they been troubling, too?’

I hesitate, before remembering what I promised her. What she needs from me, and what I need from her.

‘I have not had any,’ I tell her. ‘Not since the last time.’