It was the dawn of the fourth day of the ritual.

On the Black Earth there was no sun and no moon to tell morning from night. The sky held crimson through the morning and the noon, and thinned toward ash-grey as night came down — that turning marked as twilight. At midnight the grey deepened, and then it began to warm back toward crimson as morning followed, and that turning was the dawn.

The nobles and the commoners had all gathered outside the Council Building.

A hundred storeys, huge, oval, built like an amphitheater — rows of seats climbing in steps floor over floor, all but the topmost, where the Council resided, and the lowest, which was partitioned into a ring of medium single rooms.

The Council was six high priests, chosen from among the elder Rakshasa of each of the top noble clans, for their wisdom and their service to Rakshasa society. They were the governing body, the keepers of the law.

And more than the law. The Council was entrusted with the dark secrets and the forbidden knowledge of the clan.

An elder shortlisted for the Council had to cut every tie to his family and go into the Black Caves for a rite of purification. Those who came out of it were granted power by the Black Mother and counted among her High Priests, and only then were they welcomed inside.

As the dawn broke, the main gates opened, and the nobles came in with their families and took the seats from the high floors down, each by their place in the order of things.

After the nobles, the commoners were let in through the rear gate.

And then the building was full. All of them had come — the whole of the society, to watch the awakening of the generation that would follow them.

The Rukhs, the royals, the most prominent of the noble clans, held the upper floors, the ninety-eighth down to the sixty-fifth, their guards filling the five floors beneath them. The Ramiz, the nobles, sat from the sixtieth to the thirty-first, their guards on the thirtieth and the twenty-ninth. From the twenty-eighth floor down to the fourth sat the commoners.

The high priests watched it all from the hundredth floor, and when the last of them had settled, one of the priests spoke — Lymic — and his voice carried through the whole of the amphitheater and killed the murmur in it at a stroke.

" The High Priests of the Black Mother bid you welcome. Today we come to witness the first steps of our next generation’s ascension. The waking of the beast-bloodline is their rebirth — the thing that sets them apart from the riffraff and marks them the crème of the crop. So. Without further delay — let the ceremony begin. "

The nobles cheered, and Lymic turned and gestured to the Council guards on the ninety-ninth floor.

The guards came down at once — dropping the whole height of the building and landing on the ground floor without a scratch on them. Each set himself before one of the hundred rooms ringed around the periphery, and in the open middle of the floor stood a great circular dais.

" Room one. Master Marat, of the nobility. " A high priest’s voice rang out. " Open the door and bring him. "

The guard opened the room and went in, and came out with another Rakshasa, and set him on the dais — which stood raised two floors above the ground, so the whole amphitheater could see.

And they saw him. Six and a half feet, heavily muscled, his skin a light gold. He stood with his head high and put the claws of his right hand out and drew them back in again, and waved to the high floors.

The nobility came to its feet, cheering, clapping as one. The commoners wore grim faces and clapped anyway — unwilling, but not so unwilling as to be marked for disrespecting the nobles who watched.

" Congratulations, Marat. Take your seat on the first floor. We will test your abilities once all who have awakened are gathered. "

Marat sat, and another voice went out.

" Room two. Pavel, of the commoners. Guards, bring him. "

And when Pavel was raised onto the dais, the whole building saw the light grey of his skin, the claws unchanged, the canines unchanged. He had not awakened.

" Pavel. You may leave the building. Our guards will come to you later, to learn whether you will register as an independent worker, or serve in a noble clan. "