Sark was hurled back against the wall. It cracked behind him. Chirring insects etched words around his form. Pinned, he writhed, screaming. Black dust began to puff out of his skin as it desiccated and shrivelled. The howls coming from his wide-stretched mouth shattered the windows overhead. Glass rained down.

The black dust continued to spray out of him. He was becoming a skeletal thing, wrapped in the white cloth of his robes. He slid slowly down the wall.

‘Move!’ cried Eisenhorn.

‘You broke him,’ yelled Voriet.

‘No,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Not even slightly.’

Locustforms fluttered around them. A door stood open at the end of the hallway. It had not been there before. Daylight shone through it.

‘Quickly,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘Quickly. Don’t look back.’

And they were outside. The Karanine glade. Early evening. The old and mossy rocks of Keshtre Fortress lay around them in the undergrowth.

It was a still evening, but a sharp wind was blowing across the glade, swaying the old trees that faced them.

Drusher looked back.

A sliver of darkness stood behind them, a vertical slit in space like the shadow of a half-open door. The wind was spilling out of it, carrying smoke and clouds of locusts. The sliver was just standing there without a frame or any reference to the forest, a wound to another world.

+Thorn wishes Talon. Aegis, uplifting, a door without walls. Pattern Hawk.+

‘What was that?’ asked Macks, holding her head.

‘Keep moving,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘We have to get as far away as possible.’

‘From what?’ asked Drusher.

‘Sark’s not dead, is he?’ asked Voriet.

‘The human part is,’ said Eisenhorn. They were stumbling through the trees, locusts buzzing around them. ‘The shell is gone. But not the thing that took up residence inside Magos Draven Sark during those long years he spent inside the cage.’

‘What kind of thing?’ asked Drusher, wishing he hadn’t.

‘Something of the warp,’ said Voriet.

‘Let’s use the word daemon,’ said Eisenhorn.

‘Oh, let’s not!’ exclaimed Drusher.

‘Can you close the door?’ yelled Nayl, trying to help Voriet to keep up. ‘Shut it in there?’

‘Not any more,’ said Eisenhorn.

They ran down the slope, through the ancient woodland. There was a stream ahead. All the birds had fallen silent, as if knowing it was time to be elsewhere.

A wind howled down the high valley from the slit in the world. Trees hushed and swayed. From the Keshtre site two hundred metres behind them, they heard the air popping and tearing, squeaking and splitting as something wrenched it open like a medicae surgeon levering apart a chest with rib-spreaders.

They splashed across the stream to the far bank. Behind them, they heard trees collapsing, torn up from the roots. Voriet could barely stay with them. Nayl and Drusher grabbed him to carry him.

Drusher heard another sound, a different howling. It was high-pitched, and the roar of it shook his insides.