**Time: 28th, 00:00 GMT**
The final hour arrived.
At midnight GMT, without warning, the third—and final—"Darkness" fell. No flicker. No return. Light vanished utterly. Stars. Moon. City lights. Gone.
Only suffocating, absolute black.
The true **Long Night** began.
Simultaneously, the purple "dimensional rifts" in the sky exploded—widening, multiplying, violently unstable! No longer cracks, but suppurating wounds! Icy wind (physical and soul-deep) howled through them.
With it came clearer, closer inhuman shrieks, scrapes, wingbeats. They weren't just above anymore.
They were *on* the rooftops of Canary Wharf!
***THUD! THUD! THUD!*** Heavy impacts slammed Jack's outer steel plates! Metal shrieked under claws! Something was trying *in*!
Jack's heart leapt to his throat. He slid to a firing port, flipped on night vision (precious battery be damned). Green-tinted view: several purple chitin vultures raked the steel with beaks and talons! Farther off, upright, mantis-like shadows hacked at the neighbouring flat's sealed door with scythe-limbs!
Fear iced his veins. Instinct overrode it. He breathed deep, recalling the meditation "hum," forcing calm.
He drew the one activated glyph—the "Ignis Sol"—kept close like a talisman.
Then—the burning on his calf flared! Hotter than ever! Crawling upward! Simultaneously, the glyph in his hand grew warm, its crimson lines pulsing faint red!
Jack understood! He focused his entire will on the glyph, channelling the burning sensation (was *this* a wisp of absorbed "Qi"?) into it!
***HUMMMM—!***
The glyph resonated! Crimson lines blazed like lava! A basketball-sized phantom glyph of pure golden fire erupted from the vellum!
Blasting heat banished the cold, flooding the firing port with light!
A vulture, peering in, took the full blast!
***SCREEEEEECH—!!!***
An un-birdlike shriek tore the air! Its armoured head sizzled, vomiting purple-black smoke! Chitin melted! Eyes burst! It tumbled back, crashing into another, causing chaos.
*It worked!*
Jack's spirit soared! Though the glyph's range was short and the effort drained it (the glow dimmed visibly), it proved the book's power was *real*! In this dark, monster-haunted hour, he wasn't helpless!
"Come on, you bastards!" Jack roared at the port, equal parts terror and defiance.
He aimed the glyph, maintaining the mental-physical link, feeling that weak but true burning energy flow.
On the 16th floor of Canary Wharf, a flicker of golden fire, kindled by Eastern glyphs, burned stubbornly against the devouring dark.
High above, beyond human reach, a silent, crippled starship—the Void Watcher—glided through Earth's shadow.
Its sensors locked onto the dimensional wounds over London… and the "Emptiness" seething within—a signature triggering its highest alarms.
The Long Night was here.
The true tribulation began. Jack Miller's fight for survival had just ignited.
The secrets of the distant East, the landing alien observers, the dimensional scourge of the Emptiness… threads converged, pointing toward an abyss of uncertainty.