THE WORM’S ROAD cleft straight through the bedrock of Hell. It led on for what seemed like an eternity. I kept my eyes on the walls, searching for humps and ripples that might speak of those doomed like the poor vicar, but here I saw none.

It was Param whose eyes caught what lay ahead of us.

“Footsteps,” she said, pointing with her knife.

This road had seen little use in a long time. Pale ashen lay thick on everything, giving the black rock a surprisingly light coat. By Alain’s flame, which was little more than a weak lantern glow, we stopped to examine them. Barefoot, five-toed. The unmistakable crescent-print of men’s feet.

“How many?” I asked, looking down at my own bare feet. The bones ached, and my heels had long since given up shouting with each step. Now it was simply a haze of discomfort. Param’s own feet were covered by black slippers that kept her tread whisper-quiet.

“Not many. Four, perhaps five.” I was grateful she was saying anything. The woman was prone to long lapses of silence that summoned back the worst of what this place felt like. Were it not for the flame, I’d have felt entirely alone in the blinding dark again.

“Faded?” Param nodded and pulled her veil up to cover her face. That was the end of the conversation.

We followed those damned tracks for what felt like hours. The corridor drove straight, broadening at times to a two-lane stretch pillared by stout, square-carven collonades. We saw portals that led off to either side, but these were banded in iron. I stopped to try several, tugging at the iron, testing the rusted fittings. Even had I managed to wrench one free, though, they led down, and we desired not to climb deeper into the bowels of this place.

At each of these, I felt Bloodfang stirring within the iron of the blade, as if it sensed something down there, a foul wind carrying some sign I did not know.

Eventually the road broadened again, but this time it exceeded any chamber we’d yet seen. The walls fell away into grim-locked shadow, and the ceiling rose in a dome like we’d seen beneath the nameless village. Our footsteps were swallowed up by the dark, but of the space I could make no more sense. It was just too dark.

“The flame,” hissed Param. “Put it out!”

I did as she asked on instinct. It was no different than unclenching one’s eyes, or releasing a burden. I let the fire go, and it winked out. The dark came howling in. I gripped Bloodfang’s hilt without thinking, feeling the white leather wrapped around the hilt creak.

In the near-perfect dark, I saw something I’d never noticed before: Bloodfang’s blade glowed dimly. It was hardly enough to be seen, like the fading heat of a freshly-forged sword. I examined it more closely, realizing that the only parts that glowed were where the orange stained the blade’s surface.

And then I heard what must have startled Param. A voice, as dry as fingers brushing old parchment, slithering out of the depths.

“The Wolf hungers,” it said. “But the Flock will not fear.” The madness of a Faded, I thought. Nonsense pouring from the dead lips of a soul halfway to oblivion.

But then came an answer. One issued from at least a dozen throats: “The Flock does not fear.”

I looked to Param in the dark. I could pick out the vaguest details of her by the light of the Cindermark. The dim light that marked me as a Cinderborn. Here, it might betray me to the crowd that lay ahead. I swallowed, shifting Bloodfang’s dogs-head pommel to cover it as best I could.

“What are they?” I asked.

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“I do not know.”

“The Wolf?”

“I do not know, Cinderborn,” she said sharply.

Ahead, I heard the first speaker raise its voice in laughing, manic glee. “The Wolf who howls to the Flock will eat of your flesh!”

“The Wolf howls!” came the answer.

More madness that followed. “And he who is consumed by the Wolf will be raised to everlasting life, and will be restored on the last day!”

“Let the Wolf consume us!”

I felt Bloodfang stirring again. Corpses playing at life. Devils pretending to godhood came its snarling rebuke.

The speaker had reached a fever pitch. “Your blood is radiant, and the Wolf thirsts! He who gives freely to the Wolf will live within him, and he within them, for your blood shall mingle, and in the ashes of the World Tree will you find new life!”

“Let it burn!” cried the frenzied crowd. I could not see them, but with every response, more seemed to join, until I thought perhaps there might be dozens of them. Dozens of Faded, lingering there in the dark, bewitched by this depravity. I’d never heard such blasphemy before, but it echoed out of mind of something else I’d heard once before. Damn this place, and the worm-rotten holes in my memory, I swore.

“Madness,” Param hissed. “Cinderborn, we must stop them!” She darted forward, but I had heard something in her voice that made me cautious. This time I was quick enough to catch Param by the arm. She whirled, and by the radiant light of my chest, I caught the glimmer of a drawn blade.

“You know something,” I said flatly.

“Release me.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not about to charge into an ambush because you’re not being honest.” She glared at me, but I returned her stare. There were at least a dozen of the Faded ahead. Many more, I thought. We were tired, and I was weak. Worse, I did not know where I might awaken, should I die again. How far back could it set me? What would happen to Param? This was no time for rash decisions.

“They gather,” Param whispered, anger thick in her voice. Her fingers pried at my hand, but I did not let her go. “Is that not enough?”

“How could I know?” I hissed. “I remember nothing.”

She was silent for a long time. The drivel continued, the speaker calling to his flock, and the flock moaning their prayerful response. I stopped listening, stopped caring. I knew blasphemy when I heard it.

“The Faded rarely gather. They are lost, and know not even one another in the black fog that consumes them. Have you not felt it?” In the dark, I nodded. “But when they gather, it is for a purpose. Something is drawing these together. This Wolf.”

“You know who it is?”

“I know nothing,” she snapped. “But I fear much. We must stop them. They will feed whatever this Wolf is, pouring their radiance into it. Making it stronger. Do you see now?”

“Blind Beor,” I swore. That was an old curse, one comfortingly familiar. Restored to me by the silver tear that had given me Alain’s flame, too. I grinned in the dark, and set my thumb to Bloodfang’s dully glowing edge, drawing out a little blood.

I rubbed the radiance over the sword’s pommel, and felt the pull of energy from me to it. The black wolf appeared as no more than two bloody, glowing eyes in the dark. I knelt, reaching out my hand to it, and felt its cold nose brush against my hand.

“What are you doing?” Param demanded.

“It’s too dark to fight like this,” I said, remembering the Faded I’d fought before. “And I don’t think they rely on sight. So we’ll need light. But we need numbers, too. Bloodfang will circle around and distract them.” Like a sheepdog, I thought with a faint grin.

Param watched me guardedly. “And the light?”

“When Bloodfang is far enough away,” I said, recalling how it had turned to ash in the light of Aidan’s flame. “But not too soon.”

She nodded. “Perhaps you are not a fool.” I took that as a compliment. Beyond our planning, the black sermon continued full steam, promises of eternal life and glory gushing from the evangelist, layed on thick as mortar to cement the fervor of the lost souls that flocked around him.

Those two red eyes glared at me through the dark, like embers whipped to a killing frenzy by some unfelt, merciless gale. I nodded, and eyes vanished as the wolf cut off into the dark. It moved quiet as a shadow, but I could feel it, dimly, even through the dark.

My heart thundering like a wardrum, I tried to ignore my own weakness and the chorus of aches as I crept after Param in the dark.

These Faded wouldn’t feed the Wolf, I thought. They would feed me.