Barbatos's dream smelled of glorious death.
Noah stepped into it through the Dream Engine and found her where he always did, at the heart of a necropolis that went on forever. Tombs rose in endless terrraces under a violet sky, each one carved with names, and between them walked the dead she had raised. She sat on the steps of the tallest tomb with a book open across her knees and a thread of pale green necromancy spinning lazily between her fingers as it passed through dozens of dead Dimensions.
She looked up, saw him, and smiled.
He spared her the speech and opened his hand.
The corpse of THE Warden Who Does Not Rise came out of his Dream and settled onto the terraces of her necropolis. It filled the sky. Its frozen fur blotted out the violet light, its broken wings of stopped moments hung over whole districts of tombs, its great ringed face lay turned toward her, eyes closed, as though it had simply lain down among her dead to sleep.
