Kalmar Tull caught Olckos as he collapsed and laid him on the ground.

Shadows shifted in the forest. He whirled round, sensing danger. At first, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him before he realised the red light was fading to silver with the passing of the eclipse.

A pale crescent appeared in the sky and swiftly widened, throwing light onto the forest, and on Olckos. Terrible things had happened to the priest in the short time he’d been inside the temple. His hands were blackened from fingernail to knuckle. His eyes were sunken, dark hollows. Every vein in his face and neck was stained dark.

Kalmar swallowed bile. He signalled Tannor and six others.

‘Bring out the Underlord and the other priests,’ he ordered. ‘Do not breathe in the smoke!’

He stayed outside to try and revive Olckos and the second priest, but neither man responded. They had breathed their last.

Kalmar rushed to the temple door, just as Tannor and two tajukai staggered out with Consecrate Cadfirth, the third of the four priests. In his hands, Cadfirth clutched the Dismarat.

Tannor pushed his fist into his chest, driving out smoke. He swayed on his feet, unsteady as an old soak.

‘We could not reach the Underlord,’ Tannor rasped.

Kalmar grabbed him before he fell. ‘By Scamès, I told you not to breathe it in!’

‘I did not.’ Tannor’s voice slurred. ‘It found some other way to do its work.’ He ripped off his tajuk, revealing his lower jaw, blackened from the ears down. Dull, green fire glowed from within. Corruption had withered his face and spread through the veins of his neck in pulsing black threads.

Kalmar bit down sorrow. Tannor was one of his best men.

‘You!’ He signalled to one of the two fit and healthy tajukai remaining. ‘Take Tannor back to the Rock. Tell them what happened here.’

‘The Rock is days away,’ Tannor said, grimacing. ‘I will not make it.’

‘You have to try!’ Kalmar said, gripping his shoulder. ‘Go now, with all haste.’

Once Tannor had left, Kalmar ordered his last remaining man to wait while he went in for the Underlord.

Kalmar strode towards the temple door. As he reached the threshold, a shadow moved inside. Kalmar reached over his shoulder for the hilt of his sebassai, his heart pumping. He gave a plosive sigh as the fourth Consecrate priest staggered into the moonlight, threw his cowl back and let out a belch of foul air. The flesh of his cheeks was black, twisted and rotten.

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Kalmar turned his face aside. He filled his lungs with forest air before stepping across the threshold.

His men had not made it far. A thick screen of smoke cast a haze over the bodies scattered across the floor. Kalmar looked past them to Underlord Mai Luth, lying face-down by the altar.

The glowing smoke moved in all directions, sinking into the damp walls, the floor, the altar, and the Underlord’s motionless form. The disconcerting sight reminded Kalmar of maggots burrowing into a rotting carcass.

As Kalmar crashed down on his knees beside Mai Luth, the smoke reached for him. He hissed as a thousand needles burnt through his armour and into his skin. Wincing in agony, he reached for the Underlord, defying one of the key tenets of the faith.

Mai Luth did not respond.

Kalmar dug deep. He grabbed Mai Luth’s shoulders and unceremoniously turned him over. The Underlord’s eyes were open and fixed, his mouth agape. Smoke swirled inside his throat. Kalmar felt for a pulse and found a sluggish beat below the Underlord’s ear. Blood was moving within his veins, but the Underlord did not respond, even when he shook him.

He was neither dead nor alive, but stuck in some kind of trance.

Kalmar felt a conflicting mixture of sympathy and revulsion for his spiritual leader. The Underlord had suffered terribly and was beyond mortal help. Yet, his failure had doomed them all.

Hooking his hands below Mai Luth’s arms, Kalmar hauled with the last of his depleted strength. He pulled in vain. Mai Luth could have been nailed to the floor for all the effect he had on him.

The exertion left Kalmar swaying. Dizziness overcame him, and he nearly fell on top of Mai Luth before steadying himself on the freezing altar stone. If he held his breath any longer he would die here, alongside his men.

Bending down, he took in shallow sips of air. The stench made him lower his head with a wince, but he continued breathing until his dizziness subsided.

The Underlord lay unmoving. There was only one thing Kalmar could think to do. He traced the circle of the eclipse on Mai Luth’s forehead and whispered a blessing.

‘Uthe, sebe, alckrig, sechrin…uthe, sebe-’

Mail Luth jerked violently on the damp floor. A furious buzzing arose from his mouth like an eruption of blowflies. He let out a guttural bellow, the roar of a beast trapped within him.

The noise hit Kalmar like a wall. An iron taste flooded his mouth. A thousand spikes climbed his flesh like barbed-footed beetles. The inhuman gasps and pitiful lowing coming from the Underlord made him clamp his hands to his ears — to no avail — the sounds continued inside his head.

A voice rose above the clamour and bellowed straight between his eyes.

‘THE BODY IS NOT STRONG ENOUGH!’

Something snapped. Kalmar looked in horror at Mai Luth’s chest.

One rib gave way. Then a second. The Underlord’s body jerked with each snap, his robes sinking into his chest as his body broke, bit by bit. His shattered ribs shifted with each beat of his heart.

The Underlord is still alive!

The room began to spin. Kalmar sank down onto his hands and placed his forehead against the cool stone floor in an attempt to get the blood flowing. Once more he fought oblivion and won. He gritted his teeth and crawled towards the light, all hope of saving Mai Luth gone.

The snapping sounds became louder. Larger bones.

Kalmar did not look back. He clung to a base desire to live and crawled doggedly on, first one knee, then the other, his body shaking under the strain.

Inside his brain, the voice rose to a clamouring crescendo.

‘DEATH AND DISEASE YOU CARRY WITH YOU, DISCIPLE. UNTIL MY POWER IS FIXED TO A VESSEL STRONG ENOUGH, THE WORLD WILL SUFFER!’

Kalmar gasped and fell across the threshold. Cold sweat ran down his face.

‘Mayaqdor is here,’ he managed to tell the sole tajukai waiting outside, before his heart faltered and darkness claimed him.

He’s here.