On the stony wastes, wrapped in night, countless figures in black robes walked in silence toward the same place.
A twilight glow from some invisible dimension shone upon their night-dark cloaks, giving each towering silhouette a halo of uncertain, wavering light.
They walked across the plain, converging into rivers of dusk that flowed through the dark — and finally those dusk-rivers reached the center of the death wastes and ringed the funeral.
There stood a great gate there, its triangular doors solemn and mute.
At first Duncan thought it might be a little hill, but in the blink of an eye he found himself close enough to see its true scale — it rose up like a slab of upright earth, and the triangular aperture at its center was tightly shut.
Dark red, vein-like patterns crawled across the gate like layered chains, binding it.
The order of death had been locked by that gate.
Now the god who had personally fastened the lock sat quietly upon the throne before it — larger than Duncan had imagined, larger even than Tarikin.
Even seated, that body was almost the size of a house.
He wore a tattered robe black as night, its surface braided with dark red thorns.