They stumble to the wall and scrape their fingers against the stone, their nails cracking and skin shredding as they push against a wall that I know in my heart can’t hold them back forever.

A few more stumble from the darkness. They tumble around each other, try to crawl over one another. And all of them stare up at me with milky blue eyes. Their mouths open. Their fingers reaching for me. As if I’m the only one who can save them.

I force myself away, slap my hands over my ears and shake my head, but I can still hear them. The sound is everywhere.

Tentatively, I reach up to my head and run my fingers over the ragged edges of what’s left of my once-long hair. The cold night air feels strange against the back of my ears and neck, my face too exposed without the curtain of my bangs. I gather handfuls of snow, using it to numb the throbbing pain of my scalp, and then I pull the Recruiter’s scarf from the railing and twine it carefully around my head.

It’s all I can do, so I stand up, hunch my shoulders against the cold and start making my way down the platform. Just then I see a figure walking along the shore. In the darkness it could be an Unconsecrated, except its steps are so purposeful that it must be a living being—but someone would have to be insane to walk on the wrong side of the wall with no protection from the dead.

I pull back into the shadows, curling tightly into a ball as the figure comes closer to the platform. I realize it’s more than one person—it’s a small group—and all of them wear dingy gray tunics underneath their coats. Soulers, their faces haggard and drawn.

It doesn’t make sense for them to be out here—for them to be on the island at all, much less on the wrong side of the wall. They each carry what looks like a shovel with a sharpened head and focus intently on the group of dead under the platform. As they approach the Unconsecrated they attack, lashing out to force them to the ground and then severing their heads from their bodies.

Their movements are brutally efficient as one by one they silence the moaning. When they get to the Recruiter he struggles a bit more, trying to call out, but he’s lost so much blood that he’s too weak to protest much.

He’s not dead yet. He hasn’t turned. Two of the Soulers shrug and move down the beach, nudging the Recruiter toward the river as if the frozen water could hasten his death. The third Souler crouches and watches the Recruiter flounder and choke, blood oozing from his mouth.