Groggy, he lolled on his back. Ash, kicked up from the hard fall, billowed up in a grey pall. Coughing, he tried not to choke on it. Fire, fire in the eyes. Cinder flecks made them itch and sting. Scratch it out. Muffled voices spoke without meaning. The smell was potent, though. It was…

Burning.

A stark moment of revelation, and he realised it was his own flesh. His fingers…

They don’t feel like my own… smaller, not as strong.

…were just millimetres from the charred edges of his skin when a strong hand seized him.

‘Don’t…’ a voice warned. The faded quality dampened the sense of urgency it tried to convey. The accent was deep, thick. It had a silken tone that was instantly recognisable yet somehow incongruous.

‘What– what happened?’

My voice… strange, as if from someone else’s throat. No power, no resonance.

‘Dusk-wraiths,’ the other replied – he still couldn’t see him, his eyes registered only blurs of light and heat – as if that was explanation enough. ‘We must move. Come on, get up.’

‘I can’t see.’

So craven, so weak and… and… mortal. This is not my voice.

‘You will. Give it a moment.’

Strong hands gripped him again, hooking under the arms and hoisting him up. Sulphur tanged the breeze, acrid on his tongue. Sight returned slowly.

On the horizon stood a mountain of fire, its peaks wreathed in pyroclastic cloud as it spoke with a voice from the depths of the earth.

I know it. Was I born…?

A great plain of ash spread before him, grey like a tomb, flaking like cremated skin. In the distance, the mountain, imperious over its smaller brothers and sisters, reached up with craggy fingers to rake the incarnadine sky. Hot clouds billowed in the visceral firmament like blots of dissolute blood. Veins of lava bled down the mountain face, trailing to a vast lake of fire many kilometres away.

Ash, rock, flame – this was a hellish place, somewhere the damned came to suffer eternal torment. It was a red world, a world of magma rivers and razor-edged crags, of sulphuric seas and gorges of flame. It was beyond death.

One foot went in front of the other.

I used to be stronger than this…

His legs worked of their own volition, rather than through an effort of will. They were running when he spoke again, though he didn’t know from what.

‘Am I dead?’

Was I reborn?

The other turned, resolving through a milky film of slowly regained sight. He was tanned, etched with tribal scars and carrying a long spear. Even with the scaled hide draped across his body and the rough sandals on his feet, the man had a feral but noble bearing.

‘No, Dak’ir,’ he replied, nonplussed. ‘This is Nocturne.’

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