'gone bad'. More than thirty-five years ago Laton tried to stage a coup to seize control of a habitat called Jantrit, using a proteinic virus to threaten it with destruction. In the resulting chaos the habitat was destroyed (the only Edenist habitat ever lost) with more than a million deaths. The Confederation Navy believed it had killed Laton, but Laton had evaded capture and fled into obscurity in the wilds of Lalonde. Laton, impressed with Dexter's resourcefulness (but disgusted by his religion), offers him a place in his organisation, whose goal is the discovery of true immortality. Dexter pretends to agree, knowing refusal will mean death. Realising that Dexter is faking his interest, Laton arranges for the villagers to discover that the Ivets are satanists. In the resulting chaos most of Dexter's followers are killed. The remaining few take Powel Manani prisoner and sacrifice him in a grisly ceremony. At this moment, the observing Ly-cilph detects a strange energy current streaming from Manani through a quantum fracture in the space-time continuum. The Ly-cilph attempts to investigate by following the energy current, only to find it flooding into an energistic vacuum. Unable to extricate itself, the Ly-cilph goes into hibernation whilst still halfway between the two dimensions. This allows the strange energy forms in the dimension beyond to cross back into our universe. The result is utter mayhem. Several of the strange entities seize control of Dexter and his followers, in effect 'possessing' them. Able to call upon powers from the other realm, such as the ability to control and alter matter and hurl powerful white fireballs around, they then seize control of Aberdale and Laton's compound, forcing the inhabitants to accept possession or death. Father Elwes escapes onto the savannah with most of Aberdale's children, but not before one of the possessed reveals a terrible secret: the possessing entities are the souls of humans who have died and been trapped, some of them for millennia, in an absolute void where the only way to pass the time is to parasitically feed on the memories and experiences of others. And there are billions of them in the darkness still screaming for escape. At the moment Laton is possessed, he manages to generate a tremendously powerful affinity SOS. This reaches the only two Edenists on the planet, a pair of agents from the Edenist Intelligence agency. They travel upriver to investigate, but