Five hours into sleep, the disease had sufficiently worked its way through Johnis’s skin to stretch it ever so slightly, a condition that often resulted in cracking. Fresh blood seeped from his head wound and began to snake down his hair toward the book.

All would have been fine if Johnis hadn’t grunted and turned his head in the throes of some disturbing dream. But as fate would have it, when he did, his bloody locks made contact with the only part of the Book of History that wasn’t covered by the cloth.

And in that moment, Johnis’s world changed.

JOHNIS WAS LYING IN A FITFUL SLEEP WHEN HIS MIND exploded with black light that seared his nerves. He jerked and screamed out in pain.

He wasn’t sure if the pain came from the blackness itself or from his sudden movement in the diseased state. The man-beast shrouded in black was there again, striding forward from a surreal world, reaching for him.

A moan shattered his ears, and he threw both hands over them, screaming once again.

Then the pain was gone. And the man-beast in black vanished.

Johnis wanted it all to be gone, wanted to wake up, maybe even wanted to be dead, but darkness still fogged the corners of his vision.

He could hear his breathing, long and heavy, echoing in the fuzzy tunnel ahead of him. Another image slowly came into view at the center of the foggy hole.

A desert dune. In daylight. And in fact, Johnis himself was standing at the face of the hole, part of the darkness behind him, part of the day-lit desert ahead.

He reached his hands out to feel the air, and he could swear that the air in front of him was warmer than the darkness behind. Crazy—yes, of course—but so real.

At least in his mind. Or was it more than his mind?

His horse suddenly ran down the dune directly in front of him, stepped to the right, and looked back up the dune he’d come from. To Johnis’s amazement, a man stumbled over the crest of the dune, stared at him hard, and walked toward him.

The image was a bit distorted, as if heat was rising between them, but that didn’t make it any less real.

This wasn’t the threatening man-beast, nor Horde, but Johnis couldn’t breathe anyway. Something was very wrong. The man wore a shirt made from a thin fabric, with writing across the breast, and fitted blue pants. Leather boots—but not the dress of a warrior.

More than his dress, the man’s demeanor was out of place. Rather than walking like a skeleton in the desert, this man looked healthy. As if he’d had all the water he needed.

Johnis stepped back, frightened by the sight.

“Hey,” the man said in a very strange accent. “What’s . . .” He looked around. “What’s going on?”