The world was no longer a single thing. For Filip, reality had fractured into two separate nightmares, and the point where they met twisted together in a cruel dissonance that left him gasping for breath.

At first it was merely a flickering in his right eye, and strange shadows and writhing shapes that did not belong to the trees around him. The childish fears he had believed conquered swam up within him, making sense of the madness by giving the strange shadows faces and blades. But the faces and knives did not belong to those shadows, and when they faded, the darkness of their presence remained. Filip blinked hard, eyes hot against a burning pain within them, he tried to wipe the heat away, to wipe the strange visions away, but to no avail. Filip looked to Inquisitor Ash for guidance, for strength, for assurance that he at least knew what was happening to Filip, but even that small reprieve had fled.

In the beginning, when Filip first described the flickering visions, Ash’s face had lit up with a look that bordered on excitement, a strange thing in his hollow face. He had leaned in close, his piercing eyes searching Filip’s face as if he too could see the visions that burned his mind alive, but as the visions grew longer and Filip’s state grew more fragile, the excitement had vanished, replaced by something urgent.

Ash no longer stopped for rest, instead stopping only when the horses could go no longer, or when the visions within Filip screamed to the front of his mind and left him sliding from the saddle. Even then Ash only stopped to right him, to snap him from the dancing shadows as he urged him to stay awake, or to count his fingers. He spoke little, but when he did it was to describe what he saw, and to press him for any foreign thoughts or memories that he did not know.

"Stay with me, boy," Ash hissed, hand tight on Filip’s reins.

Filip tried to answer, tried to push the words out through a mouth that no longer obeyed him. He felt drool as it ran down his chin, and a dampness in his garments - sweat or piss he couldn’t tell. He felt shame at his lack of bodily function, shame at his body's betrayal in front of the second most important man in the Empire. But he could not muster the strength to sit, much less control each of his oddly distant limbs. It was all he could do to stay in the saddle as each jostle threatened to throw him free, his hands slipping, his knees losing grip and slick with wet. No, he could not dwell on the shame. Not through the worst agony of all; an ever present throbbing behind his eyes that shot stars across the visions and reality alike, that burned and seemed to push at his eyes, ears and mouth.

Then the agony became something more, and a scream split the air around him. Vaguely he knew it to be his scream, but the voice was unrecognizable, some eldritch cry that did not belong to the natural world, much less his own vocal chords.

Filip sat atop his horse, but in that moment he knew that he was no longer just Filip. The ethereal visions that had run wild became something more, and then all at once he saw the split visions, but this time they would not fade. His left eye saw the reality that he knew to be around him as they entered the outskirts of Klejnot, the proud capital of Nieśmiertelny. Even through the haze of his pain, the city threatened to overwhelm him as the horse twisted through a maze of white marble and towering statues.

The streets pressed in on him as horse hooves, clashing metal, and the sounds of a million souls assailed his ears, each trying to draw his attention, but each no more than a single note in the brutal symphony of the city's life. The scent of incense and sweet bread fought against the smell of hundreds of lifetimes of unwashed bodies. Inquisitor Ash rode ahead, a black ghost in the sunlight, and the only constant that he could focus on. Ash did not slow for the crowds, instead using his riding crop to lash out ruthlessly at any that dared not move from his path quick enough.

"Out of the way!" Ash’s voice cut the din of the city, and Filip clung to it.

Filip felt the jostling of the crowd against his legs, the heat of the sun on his neck, and the throb of his missing fingers. But all this was only half of his world now, and even as he fixed his left eye on Ash’s straight back, his right eye saw the tundra.

In that eye there was no sun, only a pale twilight that bled the snow purple. There were no crowds in this eye; no incense, no marble. No, here there was only the wind, an endless raging storm that howled and tore at the landscape, desperate to break the mountains and ice around them.

Even as the wind shrieked in Filip’s right ear he realized that the perspective was wrong. He was looking down from a height that made his head spin. Here in this place he wasn't sitting on a horse; he was suspended in the air, soaring over a forest of frozen, skeletal trees that stabbed up cruelly out of the ice below. The air in his right lung was so cold it threatened to freeze him solid, and he could not fight the chill despite the warmth of the city in his left eye.

And then there was the smell.

In the city, the smells were a mess of spices and filth. But in the tundra, there was only one scent: blood. It was the overpowering smell of life being spilled on the ice, and it called to an animal part of Filip that he did not know existed.

The hunger hit him then, but not the dull ache of a missed meal. This was something more; a bottomless, screaming abyss that opened up in his gut. A hunger that desperately sought to swallow the world, and even then he knew it could not be sated.

Filip’s jaw unhinged. In the city, he let out a low, pained groan that made a passing merchant stop and gape at him. But in the tundra, a roar erupted from his chest that shook the very foundations of the sky. It was a sound of pure, predatory triumph, a vibration that rattled the clouds.

I am not Filip.

The thought flicked across his mind, and strangely he did not feel freight at the realization.

He felt them then. The wings.

They weren't made of feathers. No, these were massive things of leathery skin and reptilian scales, stretching out for yards on either side of his consciousness. With every beat he felt a surge of power that made the horse he was sitting on in the city feel like a toy. In his right eye he banked and twisted, soaring higher, punching through a layer of thick, grey clouds until he was in the clear air of the upper heavens.

Below him, the frozen world stretched out, vast, untamed, and unbroken except for a dark ocean. Even from this distance he could see that the water was filled with jagged bergs of ice. He felt a deep breathe fill massive lungs, and then he was flooded with the scent of the blood. He could see them, massive creatures, seals or whales, dragged from the sea and bleeding out onto the pale snow of the icy shores.

The hunger grew and became a fever. Another cry shook the icy world and he dove, great wings tucking behind him, maw opening in anticipation.

Filip’s head twisted wildly. In the city, he was thrashing in his saddle, eyes rolling back into his head, and mouth foaming. He could hear screams, cries of ‘madman’. He could feel something else then, a cold grip stabilizing him on his horse, keeping him from being thrown by the anxious horse.

"Stay with me" Ash shouted, face oddly grey. "Filip, stay with me!"

But while Filip heard the words, he did not understand them. The city was fading, becoming a ghost-image, a dream that was losing its colour. Now the tundra was the only thing that was real. The beast inside him, the demon, the dragon, looked through Filip’s left eye and saw the people of Klejnot.

But it did not see citizens. It did not see a powerful Empire. No, it saw sheep ready for the slaughter. Thousands of soft, warm, easy sheep, packed tight together in streets and buildings that could barely hold them. The beast revelled in the sight, felt the warmth of the city and compared it to the eternal frost of the north. How long had it wandered alone in the wilds, starving when it could have been in the southlands feasting.

The dragon hurtled forward, the ocean in the right eye and the obsidian spires in the left merging into a single, terrifying target. The beast's days of searching a frigid wasteland, trying to find its way out had ended. It could sense Filip, and now, through the arrogance of men, knew the way home.

Hungry.

Filip tried to fight it, tried to resist the animal instincts. The tiny, human part of his mind, the part that remembered his mother’s voice and the smell of dirt, tried to pull back. It warned him that if he let the beast in, there would be nothing left of the boy from Marchand. He reached for his humanity, for the memory of his family; for the desire to protect others that he felt as a member of the Nightwatch.

But the beast was too strong. This was a being far older than even the mountains and as relentless as the tide. It sought the warmth and easy meals. It dived, the tundra vanishing as it focussed on Filip, halfway across a continent, a distant feeling more than a real direction, but enough for the beast to escape its frozen prison.

The last thing Filip felt as a man was a sense of soaring, terrifying joy. Exhilaration flooded him. He was no longer a victim or cripple. He was a god of ice and scale, and the world was his for the taking.

Then, the world exploded into white.

Filip woke with a sharp jolt, the pain behind his eyes gone, replaced by a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He tried to move his arms, to shield his face from the light, but they wouldn't budge. He looked down and saw heavy leather straps binding his wrists to the sides of a bed. His legs were tied as well, the restraints tight enough to bite into his skin.

This wasn’t the streets or the tundra, and he twisted against his bonds as he searched the room around him.

He was in a large, decorated bedchamber, walls covered in deep red tapestries depicting scenes of ancient battles. The ceiling was a vaulted expanse of dark wood carved with a large Imperial sigil. The air smelled of bitter herbs, old parchment, and something sharp and chemical.

His mouth tasted like iron and salt, and he ran his tongue over his teeth, probing the grit and blood coating the inside surfaces of his mouth.

"He is awake," a voice whispered.

Filip turned his head slowly trying to find the speaker in the sea of faces that stared down at him.

There were old men in silken robes, each face a map of wrinkles and age. Some held heavy books, their fingers stained with ink; others held strange brass instruments that hummed with a low, vibrating energy. They were standing in a semi-circle around the foot of the bed, watching him with a mixture of excitement and fear.

In the center stood Inquisitor Ash.

The man looked as though he hadn't slept in a week, his black robes were dusty and torn at the hem, and his face was a drawn, grey mask of exhaustion. But his eyes, those piercing, predatory eyes, were fixed on Filip with an intensity that made the boy want to hide. There was no kindness in that face.

"Filip," Ash said. His voice was low, but it commanded the silence of everyone in the room. "Can you hear me?"

Filip tried to speak, but no words came. One of the scholars stepped forward and held a cup of water to his lips. Filip drank greedily, the cool liquid soothing his raw throat.

"Where... where am I?" Filip finally managed to gasp.

"This is a safe place," Ash replied. He stepped closer, his shadow falling over Filip.

"You have been unconscious for several days now. Tell me Filip, what is the last thing you remember?"

Filip looked at the scholars. They were whispering to each other now, eyes darting between Filip and the heavy books in their hands. He felt like a specimen pinned to a board.

"The visions," Filip whispered, his heart beginning to race as the memories returned. "The cold. The wings. I was... I wasn't me."

Ash nodded, considering his response carefully.

"We know. Yours is not the first awakening, though this is the first in our lifetime. The scholars have been debating the nature of your condition since we arrived. Some call it a haunting. Others an inhabitation, a soul bond of man and monster." Ash leaned in, his voice dropping so low the scholars couldn't hear. “The name doesn’t matter, only that this is a beginning and you maintain the bond. This is not something we can lose."

Filip strained against the leather straps, a sudden panic rising in his chest. "Let me go, please. The things I thought, the things I saw. I don’t want those visions, or any part of - ."

"You don't understand, boy," one of the old scholars cut him off, not bothering to lift his gaze from the book he examined intently in his hands. "You aren't just seeing it. You are becoming the bridge to something older; something lost to the world. The life of one boy is nothing compared to what we stand to gain. Even if you don't see the material benefit, as scholars we would be derelict in our duties to ignore the potential knowledge. We could learn more through you on the soul bond then we have in all recorded history."

Ash silenced the old man with a sharp look. He turned back to Filip, expression softening into something that might have been pity, if Filip believed Ash capable of such a thing.

"The Empire is dying, Filip," Ash said. "The famine, the plague, the rot in the provinces... the old ways are failing. We need a new power. A power that can restore order through fear, just as the first Emperor did."

"By turning me into a monster?" Filip felt his heart beating faster, felt the tension in his forehead as he tried to sound tough. He felt a sweat break out across his forehead as he tried to focus on Ash.

"By turning you into a weapon," Ash corrected. "The beast you saw... it is coming. It has been dormant for centuries, hidden in the wastes of the north. But it has tasted the world again through you. It is searching for a way back, and through you we can dictate the terms of its return."

Filip closed his eyes, the image of the tundra returning. He could still feel the power of the wings, the strength in its roar as it reverberated through his chest. He realized then that the restraints weren't just to keep him from hurting himself. They were to keep the beast from taking his body while he slept.

"What are you going to do to me?" Filip asked.

Ash reached out and placed a hand on Filip’s fevered forehead. His palm was cold and strangely comforting against his skin.

"We are going to teach you how to control the hunger," Ash said. "We are going to teach you how to use the beast's eyes without losing your own. You will become the most powerful man in the Empire, Filip. A hero not seen since the first Lord Emperor inherited the powers you now have within you. But for that to happen, you must first survive the binding."

Ash turned to the scholars. "Begin the first rite. We must stabilize the bond before the beast worms its way free of the North."

The scholars began to move, their robes rustling as they lit braziers filled with pungent blue smoke, and began to chant in a language that sounded like the grinding of stones. The brass instruments hummed louder, the vibrations shaking the bed and the very bones in Filip’s body.

Filip felt the heat returning to his eyes. The pressure behind his skull began to build once more, a relentless, surging tide of fire.

"Ash!" Filip screamed, his voice cracking as the chanting grew louder.

But the Inquisitor didn't move. He stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest, watching Filip with a cold detachment, no longer his traveling companion of so many weeks. He was a sculptor, and Filip was the clay.

The room faded. The red tapestries, the old men, the vaulted ceiling, they all blurred into a single, swirling vortex of colour in his left eye even as his right burned alive.

He saw the snow. He saw the ice. And he heard the terrible clicking.

Hungry.

This time, Filip couldn’t fight it. The darkness overtook him in an instant, leaving him to fall into a restless, dreaming sleep where cities burned and the sky was filled with the shadow of wings.

As his consciousness slipped away, he felt the leather straps straining. He felt his teeth sharp against his tongue. And deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace, the scholars continued their chant, oblivious to the fact that the monster they were trying to tame was already looking at them through the eyes of a boy from Marchand, watching their futile efforts with a deep hunger that would not be sated by one city, or even an Empire.

Inquisitor Ash stood tall in the flickering firelight, a small, thin smile stretching his hollow face. Undoubtedly believing the awakening to be a gift beyond their wildest wishes. If they could only learn to harness the fearsome monster, then their positions and power would be set for another generation.

The world was changing, and as Filip’s humanity flickered out, the reign of the beast began in the silence of Ash’s inner sanctum. As Filip drifted into the black, his last thought was a haunting echo of the creature's song, incomprehensible as words, but the message all too clear.

I am coming.