He arrived just in time to see Ezekiel and his last remaining monk lower themselves into a well inside a large cube-shaped structure at the bottom of the vast hall.

Malkuth.

The entry to the underworld, to a second series of mazes that led to the Throne of the Tree of Death.

Jack hesitated, spun to look behind him.

Out through the main doorway, he saw the city-maze—complex, ornate and in any other circumstance, a site that would have been one of history’s greatest archaeological discoveries. It was now half-flooded by the incoming seawater.

He saw the tiny figures of Easton, Lily and Smiley over on the eastern wall, now hopelessly separated from him by broken bridges and heaving seawater.

You have to go on, he thought.

Alone.

And so he turned and hurried for the archway of Malkuth.

Coming to the deep stone well, Jack peered tentatively over its rimless edge.

He was worried that Ezekiel might be down there waiting with a rifle pointed up at him.

But no gunfire came.

On second thought, Jack figured, Ezekiel was probably more worried about the seawater that was about to flood into the well and whatever maze of tunnels was down there and so had bolted away.

Jack clambered down the hand- and footholds cut into the stone wall of the well, descending into the darkness with only the flashlight on his fire helmet to guide him.

At the base of the well was a long flat tunnel.

Except for the dim light coming from the well, it was entirely dark. It had no crimson orbs in its ceiling. By the look of it, it stretched eastward, back toward the Sinai Desert.

Jack hurried down it until, after about a kilometre, it angled upward as a steep stepped tunnel.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of stairs rose up into blackness—

A dull roar echoed from behind him.

It sounded like a powerful indoor waterfall.

‘Oh, shit,’ he gasped. ‘The floodwaters just arrived in the castle.’

He charged up the stairs.

Ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

The roar from the tunnel behind him grew louder, the sound of rushing, crashing water.

Jack couldn’t see it, but back in the megastadium, the rising waves of seawater had reached the castle . . .

. . . and slithered inside it . . .

. . . stretching across the castle’s slick stone floor, reaching like a living creature for the archway of Malkuth in the middle.

When it reached the well, the incoming seawater just poured down it in shocking quantities, like bathwater swirling down a drain.

It was now filling Jack’s tunnel underneath the megastadium, and until it reached the same level as the sea above, it would keep pouring in.

Jack pounded up the ascending tunnel.

He heard the first wave of seawater lash against the base of the stairs, heard it rising up through the darkness below him.