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Fern spent the daysunk into her work in a quiet corner of the Alchemy Wing, pausing only briefly for coffee at noon and a quick dinner. Before she even realised how much time had passed, the distant chiming of the midnight bell echoed through Carthane, startling her.

She stretched her arms, wriggling her fingers in the air, and glanced behind her. She caught a glimpse of gold brocade as General Srivastav hurried out, seemingly the last candidate to leave. In his wake, the Alchemy Wing was utterly silent; half the lamps had been extinguished.

Fern imagined Srivastav, like the other candidates, was not particularly keen to stay within the library too late after what had happened to Vittoria.

Although part of her was tempted to follow the general’s suit, she was engrossed in her reading and making good progress on her research. The book she was currently working through detailed notable uses of Blood Alchemy before its criminalisation. A collection of gory, sinister stories, abominable acts committed for the sake of power.

Like the case of the Isle of Erebus, the old prison which had been purchased by a rich alchemist. He had used the prisoners to conduct horrifying experiments designed to prolong his own existence. The prisoners suffered countless atrocities at his hands over severaldecades, until the Reformed Vatican finally intervened and shut it down.

Now, the Isle of Erebus was little more than a collection of crumbling ruins, but the alchemist himself had remained a respected member of the Guild of Alchemy until he died, facing no consequences for what he had done.

Or the case of House Morgraine, one of the oldest noble arcane families in France.

They had infamously used Blood Magic to fetter their servants to them, making them little more than bloodbound slaves, and had slowly expanded their reach, binding first their lieges to them, then their standing army, then their allies. This had allowed them to amass untold power and wealth, but their ambition had fatally led to the very demise of their house, and, eventually, to the banning of Blood Alchemy by law.

Though it turned Fern’s stomach to read the details of these stories, there was something perversely compelling about the tales, and she read on long after the midnight bell. She was determined to finish the book and complete her research on Blood Alchemy before turning in for the night.

A noise drifted towards her, low and keening, like a mournful cry.

Fern looked up, her heart missing a beat. Everything was silent. But she had heard something—hadn’t she?

She waited, head turned in the direction of the doorway. Nothing moved. Outside, the wind caressed the window, bringing with it the sound of the ocean, the deep rushing pulse of waves like a great heartbeat.

Fern turned back towards her book, but she could no longer concentrate on the words. Whether the sound had been real or not, the attack on Vittoria Orsini was—she could not ignorethat. She checked her watch. Three o’clock in the morning. She had stayed up longer than she intended anyway.

She packed hastily and left. On her way back to the Mage Tower, she did not hear the strange, keening noise again. As she passed the entrance to the Gallery, the dark, magnetic pull of a distant Gateway tugged at her without insistence, and was easy enough to ignore this time, but she hastened her step. She remembered all too well the sight of Vittoria’s sea-foam green gown splattered with blood, and her own fear of Sumbral creatures still lingered within her.

She had just reached the entrance atrium when she heard another noise.

She froze.

The sound of heavy footsteps. Sentinels? Or something else?

Dipping behind one of the enormous pillars of dark marble, Fern let the shadows conceal her. The footsteps drew closer.

Her fear burst to life in her chest, a sensation like needles pricking her skin. What if something had slipped through a Gateway again? What if the Sentinels had failed to catch whatever had attacked Vittoria, or what if it had escaped?

Fern had only encountered one such creature once before, when she was a student. She’d been studying an ancient Gateway in the ruins of a French monastery—the same monastery where she’d foundInkwell. In the middle of the night, the entire expedition awoke, shocked with nausea, and a horrible sense of inversion, of the world being turned inside out.

At first, nobody had noticed that something had passed through the Gateway. Then there were screams. Fern, only twenty-two at the time, had gone in search of the expedition lead, a historian and a powerful mage, when she’d come face to face with the creature.

It was no larger than a dog, though it did not resemble anything Fern had ever seen in her life. A mass of black sinew, a writhing black aura that reeked like a pestilence. Within the wet mass of the body, a network of phosphorescent veins pulsing, oozing sallow melted light.

Above all, Fern remembered the gaping maw, with its rows of jagged teeth, the humming of its voice like a distorted grunt of pain, and its eyes, voids of darkness without end, without comprehension, without anything but pure, mindless malevolence.

Before Fern could even open her mouth to scream, before the creature could even move, the historian-mage appeared on the other side of the beast and sent a silver arrow whistling through the air.

It pierced the place between the creature’s eyes, sending it flying in a streak of shadow and phosphorescence, sinew and blood losing form before the creature could even hit the ground. It died without shape, a black, amorphous, repulsive nothing.

Seven years had passed since, but the memory of it still chilled the marrow in Fern’s bones.

Those creatures were not like Lautric henchmen, easily fought off. If she bumped into one now, Fern might not be as lucky as Vittoria. The best she could hopewas to buy herself enough time for the Sentinels to alert Sarlet, so she pressed herself into the shadows behind the pillar and raked her mind for a defensive incantation.

The footsteps grew louder. Then a smell crept towards her. Not the stench she remembered from the monastery, but something different. Mud, frost, and an odd botanical smell, like caraway.

Finally a shadow, elongated and multiplied by the night gas lamps, slid into view. The figure drew closer. Fern thought suddenly of Oscar, of his warnings, and the dagger he had given her.

The dagger that was hidden in its safe place, where it would be utterly unable to keephersafe from whatever was lurking within Carthane.