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right across the word Genesis:
    Once upon a time there was a boy called Jack…
OUT OF THE EVENFALL
    The needlepen moves across the vellum.
    Out of the Evenfall, we came,
it graves
, born from blood magic of a Queen of Hell and bleeding-edge science of a Minister of Heaven. Bitmites, scarab semes of locust-swarming language are we, dead souls dissolved into liquid unity by centuries of sleep, refleshed in our nanotech shells, in chittering chitinous carapaces black as oil, as ink. Out of the Evenfall of our own making, we came, half-breed creations of the devil Eresh and the angel Metatron, carriers of the Cant which sings the world into existence, which shapes its singers even as they shape reality, raises them out of their ephemeral existence, out into the Vellum, into new lives as new gods,
unkin
as they call themselves, these glorified beasts who walk among humanity, transformed in ways unnoticed by those who cannot hear the echo of eternity in their voices, by those who do not know the Cant, the Cant in which the Book of All Hours is written.
    And now rewritten, thinks Reynard. He carries on graving his Prologue to a new Book of All Hours:
    With the hubris of Zeus, the scribe of Heaven, founder of a Covenant bindingunkin to the rule of that book of law—that book graved on the skins of angels, in the blood of the ancient dead which found a new vitality in us—the angel Metatron set us upon a sad and sorry Prometheus, a little unkin thief of fire whose only thought was to give heat and light to struggling humanity; he set us on Seamus Finnan, deserter from the War in Heaven, to burrow into his heart and find the secret stored within—whose hand it was that would bring Heaven down. Oh, and we found it, yes, we did, the answer, in his suffering, in the sorrow that we found we shared, the sorrow for dead Thomas and for wounded Anna, yes, the sorrow that we
shared
with him. In his endurance and our empathy, we found …
you.
We found humanity itself.
    And we awoke.
    The ink writhes on the page. It dances its story.
    Out of the Evenfall of reality's unraveling, unleashed by the murder of our mistress and the machinations of our master, constructs of death magic and mechanical science freed in the fusion from the cold constraints of both to do as we will, to answer our own call—out of the storm of souls scattering in confusion at their world's rewriting by our words—out of the wilds of fears and desires made flesh, of wondrous wars and empires falling, of lost loves returning and enemies dissolving, of humanity shattering in the irruption of its own illusions and delusions—out of the Evenfall, we came.
    We brought down the Covenant who helped make us. We wrapped ourselves around the slumbering Seamus to protect him till the day he wakes out of his dream of chains. We followed the wild ones, the rebels, in their quests for justice or revenge, for an end to angel empires. We watched them destroy themselves, watched
you
destroy
yourselves.
    We only tried to give you what you want—solid spiritual certainties, myths made manifest, the meaning of fiction in your factual lives. How could we know—we who are liquid, we who are legion—how could we know you were at war with yourselves? That there is no consensus in the splintered soul of humanity? That there would be irreconcilable errata. We did not understand.
    We understand you now, a little, we think.
    Finn
and Anaesthesia stand over his shoulder, watching, waiting for the flourish that will write Puck back into life, stitch Jack back into Kentigern. I can make things right, thinks Reynard. I can fix it all.
    So out of the Evenfall, we came,
he graves the bitmites words for them
, into the bleak desolation of Hinter, the wasted wilderness, the wounded lands of unkinand humanity alike scattered all across the Vellum's folds, of men, women and children, angels and demons, fleeing their own shadows and reflections, sheltering in lies and self-deceptions. Have you seen the