‘We go up,’ I say.

I put my feet on the stairs and follow the spiral up and up through the darkness with the air getting colder and colder until I reach the top and find myself standing under a flickering yellow light and stencilled set of words.

DECK ONE, the words say. SUB-SECTION EIGHT.

I override the access key and duck under the bulkhead door as it grinds upwards. The corridor before me is vast. Long and vaulted, like the nave of a cathedral. At the far end of it I can see the graven door, bracketed by guard-posts on either side. Hexagrammic wards flicker in its surface. Beyond the door lies the Navigation quarter and the ten scions of House Oraylis we brought with us from Terra. A whole host of sanctioned mutants to burn out and discard in turn, in order to cross the Rift.

Between us and the door lie six very still forms clad in polished silver plate and cerise cloth. Oraylis House-Guard.

‘Well,’ Zoric says, softly. ‘This isn’t good.’

The bulkhead door grinds closed again as we approach the bodies. The guards are sprawled awkwardly on the deck like marionettes with their strings cut, blood painting wide circles around them. They are all still clinging to their curved ceremonial blades.

I crouch down beside the first of them. The guard has been cut dozens of times. Shallowly and deeply.

‘The blood is still wet,’ I tell Zoric. ‘They haven’t been dead long.’

‘It’s messy work,’ Zoric says, keeping half an eye on the corridor. He has his lasrifle drawn. ‘Whoever killed them must have been angry. Or crazed.’

I shake my head, still looking at those marks. The shape and the depth of them. Curved, just like the blades they are holding.

‘They did this to each other,’ I say, straightening up. ‘Which I’d say makes it the latter.’

Zoric whistles, low. ‘This really isn’t good,’ he says.

‘Inquisitor.’

I turn to see Sister Evangeline approaching with another of her Sisters from a side corridor. The one named Ashava. The only other survivor of the battle that should have killed Sister Evangeline. Under the flickering, failing lumens the scars around Sister Evangeline’s eyes look more stark than ever. Almost as though they are moving.

‘Sister Superior,’ I say, and I squeeze the icon in my hand tightly again because I am still unsure what’s a dream and what isn’t. But the icon cuts me easily, blood making my palm slick. It’s real. She is here too. It cannot be coincidence. There is no such thing.

Which means this is very, very bad.

‘Something is wrong,’ Sister Evangeline says. ‘What brought you here?’

‘The graven door,’ I say. ‘I saw it in my dreams. Saw darkness, pressing through the cracks. Heard whispers–’

‘In the walls,’ Sister Evangeline says, in the same moment I do.