The Interval tolled again, resonating through the thousand-throated clamour, and the roar faded into expectant silence. The ghus, the oceanic prayer horns, sounded just as the eastern light etched the horizon in brilliant gold, like a cup tipped to overflowing.

Gold paint gleamed. Circumfix banners hung listless in the chill air. A presentiment passed through the assembly, and the cries of defiance and adulation rose once again, the way wind might coax a second rain from sodden trees. Their Aspect-Emperor—they could feel him.

He walked across the vault of heaven, standing bright in a sun that had yet to reach the masses below. Orange and rose painted the eastern flanges of his white-silk robes. His golden hair and braided beard shone. Starlight flashed from his high-hanging eyes. The Men of the Three Seas howled and roared in adoration—a cacophony of tongues. They reached out, lifted fingertips to touch his remote image.

“HOLD MY LIGHT,” the hanging figure called in thunder.

The rim of the sun boiled over the horizon, and morning dawned over the Great Ordeal. Warmth kissed the cheeks of those watching.

“FOR TODAY WE WALK THE WAYS OF SHADOW …”

And they fell to their knees—warriors and scribes, kings and slaves, priests and sorcerers, more than two hundred and eighty thousand souls, the greatest gathering of human arms and glory the world had ever seen. So many that it seemed that the floor of the world had dropped with their kneeling. They raised their faces and cried out, for light had come to them …

And the sun had followed.

“AMONG ALL PEOPLES, ONLY YOU HAVE TAKEN UP THE YOKE OF APOCALYPSE. AMONG ALL PEOPLES, ONLY YOU …”

For the Sakarpi who watched from their broken battlements, it was a thing of wonder and horror. Many felt a kind of hanging consternation, similar to that which afflicts men who make overbearing declarations. Everyone had assumed the Second Apocalypse and the march to Golgotterath was simply a pretext, that the Great Ordeal was an army of conquest, and the assault on Sakarpus another chapter of the Unification Wars, about which they had heard so many atrocious rumours and tales. But now …

Did they not witness proof of the Aspect-Emperor’s word?

No one dared mock. Not a single jeer was raised against the ecstatic roar. They listened to their conqueror’s sky-spanning voice, and though the language defeated them, they thought they understood what was said. They knew the scene before them would be celebrated for a thousand years, that accounts of it would be recited in the manner of The Sagas or even The Chronicle of the Tusk.

The day the Great Ordeal marched beyond the frontiers of Men.