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through his body, but he was cool and his breath was calm.

    The huge doors that dominated the miles-high Herald’s Hall were somehow brighter and more real than the hard, cold stone underfoot. The wall they were set into was indistinct, slanted away from Mihn and stretching into the murky distance, with no corners in sight. The doors themselves were composed of a chaotic network of bones, ranging from the smallest finger-bone to thigh-bones broader and longer even than the biggest of white-eyes; bigger than Mihn imagined a dragon’s bones would be. White marble formed a peaked frame around them, through which ran threads of faintly glittering silver.

    The tangle of interlinked bones was bleached a uniform white. There were gaps Mihn would have been able to slip himself into, perhaps even make his way all the way through, but some fearful part of him pictured the bones closing around him, including him in the structure. He stepped back and looked up and a moment of renewed dizziness washed over him as his mind struggled to accept the sight. When that passed Mihn began to see a purpose to the chaotic structure; a pattern that absorbed the jumble of linked bones to impose a rigid grandeur upon the whole.

    Somehow that realisation made him feel better, easing the feeling of being lost amidst chaos. The time had come, so without even his staff to hand - the witch Daima had sternly forbidden him to carry anything, he could take only what could be worn - Mihn touched his finger to the nearest bone. It was freezing cold, and a chill ran up the underside of his arm while a great creak rang out through the hall. The doors yielded smoothly, beginning to swing inwards. They moved silently once they had cleared each other, barely disturbing the air.

    He felt his breath catch as a vast, dark room was revealed. Torches flickered distantly on the walls, enough only to trace the bare lines of Death’s throne room. As he walked forward he looked around, the Herald keeping pace at his side. The throne room was hexagonal, maybe not as staggeringly vast as the Herald’s Hall, but still bigger than any human construction - as big as the entire Temple Plain in Thotel. The Hall of Judgment had two doorways in it. On Mihn’s right was the second of those, two pillars supporting a portico above a door of profound and featureless blackness.

    Atop the portico were statues, distant enough to appear small to Mihn, but illuminated by huge flickering torches on either side. On one end stood a group he recognised all too well from his lord’s shadow - worryingly, the largest of the five was the Wither Queen. On the other were daemons of various shapes, only one of which he recognised: a minotaur-like figure with a gigantic hammer known as Getan of the Punishment. Carved into the jutting portico itself was an image of a dragon, wings outstretched in a way that reminded him of the entrance to the Tower of Semar in Tirah Palace.

    A faint breeze touched his skin as the doors closed behind and Mihn’s gaze was dragged inexorably away to the other side. The sudden weight of terror and awe mingling drove him to one knee. Through the darkness, set against the centre of the wall, he could make out an enormous throne, part of the very fabric of the hall itself.

    The throne was two hundred feet high, of sculpted stone that needed no finery or adornment to convey its power, and it was occupied by a gigantic cowled figure that slowly appeared from the gloom. Mihn could feel Death’s presence like a raging wind blowing through the room, power incarnate that made his bones judder and his hands tremble. The cold of the grave was tangible on Mihn’s skin, a biting chill that worked its way into his veins as he stared in horror at the emaciated white fingers curled around the end of one armrest. A golden sceptre rested in the crook of His left arm, decorated with spirals of ruby and diamond. Of His face there was no sign - even here in the Hall of Judgment the