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Before anyone could either answer or inquire further, another rumble arrived, this one much more vigorous.

Alarmingly so, she felt.

There was something else, too. Something she was having trouble pinning down with her senses. Something disorienting.

In the few times she’d experienced this space before, she’d never felt anything quite like that here. This place was always calm. Tremors like that had always been mild, at most. Never enough to disrupt her senses in the slightest. But now, she could almost feel herself slipping. The time distortion between the real world and this Void State was weakening. Shuddering. Threatening to dissolve, perhaps.

The next tremor was stronger still. And the world blinked in and out for her, swapping between the Void State and the Luthic Ocean in its disturbed fullness.

She was forced to concentrate. To hold onto the Void State or be torn from it.

But she held. Maintained herself. Stayed in the space. There was still plenty of negotiating left to do, after all. She couldn’t let it end yet.

There was indeed a new presence, however. A fourth soul manifesting in this privileged space. She heard one of the others mention Sermung’s name, but she was still too distracted to tell which of them had said it. And she already knew that it couldn’t be him, besides. If he’d been able to come here himself, then he never would have sent his Magician to persuade her.

No. As her mind settled, she became even more convinced that the fourth was not the Crystal Titan. She could sense the aura therein, and it was not Sermung’s. Not in the slightest.

It was ferocious. Burning so hotly that she could almost feel her skin tingling in the real world. But not like Jackson, either. That man’s aura was always warm and composed, even in combat.

This was wild. Raging. Bloodthirsty and hungry.

‘Oh, ffffuck,’ said Morgunov, having apparently figured it out before her. ‘Not him! He can’t be here, too! Go away, you bastard!’

Who?

Then she pieced it together. The shape of the accompanying soul. It was not one she’d met very often before, but she could see the connection to the physical body that was already on the oceanic battlefield.

It was the wolf. The Man-Eater of Melmoore.

His mind was breaching through the Void State with all the serenity of a smacked hornet’s nest.