It was their other rival in this deadly race, the one who had got here first—ahead of both Sphinx and him—and who didn’t want to see anyone sit on the throne and thus avert Omega.

Jack checked his watch.

4:48 a.m.

Eighteen minutes till Omega.

He’d only been inside the colossus’s chamber—and the strange void—for a few minutes.

During a brief pause in the gunfire, Jack peered over the altar and saw a figure a hundred metres away, on a tower of some kind in the centre of an upwardly sloping bridge, with an assault rifle of his own aimed back at the chapel and unleashing a torrent of tracer fire with it.

It was a classic sniper’s position, perfect for holding off anyone coming out of the chapel, with a clear field of fire over the narrow slanted bridge.

‘Nice to see you again, Captain!’ Sphinx shouted above the gunfire. ‘Welcome to the end of all things!’

‘You’re such an asshole.’ Jack glanced around the altar, trying to take in their full predicament.

Out through the doorway, he saw a vast round space, one that was almost identical to the one he had encountered at the first throne, the Throne of the Tree of Life.

Only this was the home of its sinister sibling: the Throne of the Tree of Death.

A magnificent many-spired castle—mounted on a sturdy stone pedestal and with a pinnacle stretching skyward from its topmost level—stood out in the middle of a superwide circular area that, like the earlier megastadium, was itself ringed by an eight-hundred-foot-high wall of greystone.

But there were distinct differences.

While the previous castle had been white and silver, this one was black and gold.

It was also crafted in a different style: it was more severe, with sharper angles and a fiercer aspect.

It also had, Jack saw with his trained eyes, one less window-balcony than the earlier castle.

This, he knew, was the subtle but important difference between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death: while otherwise similar in their designs, the Tree of Death possessed one less ‘node’ than the Tree of Life did.

Another major difference was that the broad round space around this castle had no maze in it; no city-sized tangle of buildings, temples and obelisks.

It just had one long ascending bridge of stairs that extended out from Jack’s chamber to meet the base of the castle.

This bridge, with its rising stone stairs, passed through a towering greystone pylon before it reached the all-important castle.

On this pylon was the temple on which Rastor had entrenched himself with his assault rifle.

It was the ideal spot for him to make his last stand.

Because it was a perfect bottleneck.

Neither Jack nor Sphinx could reach the castle without going up the narrow bridge and through that temple.