For many hours the children of the House of Hermes were silent, lost in their thoughts. As the sun began to sink they saw the stars for what they all knew may be their last time. And then they came upon the Nameless Land.

There were few trees here, and those that remained were twisted into strange gnarled shapes. The song of the birds was replaced by the cry of distant unseen monsters. A thick and acrid mist hung over the land. No one who had not progressed as far in the Great Work as the children of the children of Hermes could even survive here. It was fitting that now, with the House of Hermes so close to death, its children should return to the place of Hermes’s greatest failure.

As they went deeper into the mist they heard a roaring sound which grew louder and louder, and a sound like the beating of great wings. Even the children of Hermes, who had seen many terrible things, grew afraid at this. Something vast and dark and terrible was rising toward them through the mist.