We saw the Shadow the night Bill-E was killed. A huge, nebulous cloud of a monster, darker than any night, almost as black as the cave when I was sealed up there. Immensely powerful even by demonic standards.

Lord Loss said the creature would destroy humanity. The maudlin demon master craves human misery, feeding on it like a cat slurping milk. In my time he slyly helped me close a tunnel, to stop a demon invasion. He needs humans the way a fish needs water.

But he’s afraid of the Shadow. He doesn’t believe mankind can defeat this new threat. He sided with the creature, served as if he was an ordinary demon, not a powerful master. He did the Shadow’s bidding, even though that might mean the end of the human suffering he cherishes.

Lord Loss’s fear of the Shadow fills Beranabus with unease. He believes the war between humanity and the Demonata can’t last forever. In the distant past, the powerful Old Creatures ruled the Earth and demons couldn’t cross. By my time their power had waned. That led to the current war between humans and demons. Beranabus thinks we must find a way to block their passage between universes or they’ll wipe us out completely.

The Kah-Gash has been Beranabus’s only real hope. According to the ancient legends, the weapon can destroy a universe—ours or the Demonata’s. He’d love to do that. It doesn’t bother him that he’d be eradicating an entire life form. He sees this as a blood-drenched fight to the finish. The universes are colliding and only the victors will survive.

Beranabus has the Kah-Gash now—in the shape of Grubbs, Kernel and me—but he doesn’t trust it. The weapon has a will of its own. It worked through us when the world was last threatened by a demon breakthrough but it’s been silent since. We don’t know what its plans or desires are.

Beranabus hoped to experiment, unlock the Kah-Gash’s secrets, find out how to direct its great power. But so far he hasn’t learnt anything new.

Unwilling to unleash the Kah-Gash, Beranabus instead hunted for the shadowy monster we’d glimpsed in the cave. Having no name for it, he dubbed it the Shadow. The more he chased it, the more apt that name became.

Beranabus has interrogated many demons who know about the Shadow, but not one knows its real name. It’s rumoured to be more powerful than any other demon. They say it’s been working in secrecy for hundreds of years. That it recently made itself known to a number of demon masters, recruiting them to help it achieve its ultimate aim—the removal of the human stain.

That’s how demons see us, as a stain on the universes. They were here long before us and consider themselves superior. They hated the Old Creatures but respected them. They have nothing but contempt for our weak, mortal kind.

The Shadow has promised to kill every human and make the Demonata more powerful than ever. A few demons told Beranabus that it had even promised a return to the original state of the universes and the elimination of death, but we’re not sure what that means. The demons weren’t sure either.

Beranabus hasn’t dared go after any of the masters. They’re too powerful. He thinks the creature has made its base in Lord Loss’s realm, but he dares not set foot there. And Kernel—who can usually find anything in either universe—isn’t able to search for the beast since he doesn’t know the thing’s name and didn’t see it in the cave, being blind at the time. Beranabus has tried to magically recreate a picture of the Shadow, but it always comes up blurred and indistinct.

We spent the first couple of days here arguing about what to do next. While I worked tirelessly on Sharmila’s legs—and helped her adjust to the shock when she regained consciousness—Dervish pressed Beranabus to focus on the werewolf and demon attacks.

“You’ve been chasing this Shadow for months without result,” he argued. “This is something concrete, a puzzle we can solve. Better to direct our energies at a problem we can crack than waste them on an enigma.”

“But all else is irrelevant,” Beranabus bellowed. “The Shadow is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. We have to pursue it relentlessly, down as many blind alleys as it takes, until we find a demon who knows its name, where it comes from, how powerful it is. The knowledge is out there. We just have to find it. But we can’t do that if we squander our time on a bunch of hairy Grady miscreants!”

Dervish countered by insisting the attacks were linked to the Shadow. We know Lord Loss is working for him, and that the revived Juni Swan works for Lord Loss.

“Maybe Lord Loss and Juni just want to kill us before the world is ruined,” he said. “But they might be planning to use the werewolves to target the Disciples, kill as many as they can and clear the way for crossings.”

Kernel supported Dervish. “We can’t go after Lord Loss directly—he’s too powerful,” he said. “But we can target Juni. Lord Loss didn’t show himself at the hospital but Juni was acting on his behalf. She might have been part of the group in Carcery Vale too. If more assaults on the Disciples are planned, she’ll possibly act as the go-between again, conveying Lord Loss’s orders to their allies. If we can trap her, we can find out what she knows about the Shadow.”

Beranabus was swayed by that and told Kernel to devote himself to tracking her movements. I think he’s keen to get his hands on Juni for personal reasons. She betrayed him. But it’s not just revenge he’s interested in. He also wants to know how she came back.

We don’t understand how my soul remained trapped in the cave when I died, or how I returned to life. That’s never happened before. Ghosts exist, but they’re mere after-images of people. We don’t know where a person’s soul goes when they die, if there’s a heavenly realm, if they get reborn or if they simply cease to exist. But they always move on. Never, in all of history, has a person’s soul survived death and returned to life. Until me. And now Juni.

Beranabus believes I survived because I’m part of the Kah-Gash. The mystical weapon turned back time, so it could feasibly cheat death too. But Juni isn’t a piece of the Kah-Gash. She shouldn’t have been able to survive the destruction of her body. Her return troubles Beranabus deeply. He suspects it’s linked to the rise of the Shadow. If the new demon leader has the power to restore life, maybe it shares other powers in common with the Kah-Gash. Beranabus wants—needs—to know.

So Kernel has been focusing on Juni and Lord Loss for the last few days. He’s developed in many ways since the three of us worked in league as the Kah-Gash. He can do more than open windows now. He can search for several people at the same time, and track their movements—he knows when they switch from one realm or universe to the other.

Juni is currently in Lord Loss’s kingdom, with her master. But as soon as she moves, Kernel will know and we’ll blaze into action.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Beranabus. He’s changed so much over the centuries, made himself hard and uncaring, believing he had to be like a demon in order to fight the Demonata. It helped that he is half-demon. There’s a monster within him, always active, struggling to rise to the surface. Beranabus has to fight it constantly to maintain control, but through those battles he’s learnt more about demons and their ways than he ever could have otherwise.

One of his greatest fears is that he’ll go insane and the demon within him will take over. It would be the ultimate irony—the man who spent all his life battling to save humans from the Demonata turns into one of them and goes on a massive killing spree.

Beranabus can discuss such fears with me because I already know about them. I absorbed his secrets along with his memories, so he can’t hide them from me. I know almost as much about the ancient magician as he does.

“Sometimes I wonder if my life’s been worthwhile,” he muttered last night when we were apart from the others. “I’ve gone without pleasure or company for most of my years. If we lose and the Demonata kill us all, there won’t have been a point. Maybe I should have settled, married, had children, lived a normal life. It might not have made any difference in the end.”