Suddenly apprehensive, and not a little nervous, Adedayo ever so slowly lifted the lid. Inside was dark. Inside was empty.

But something in that emptiness reached out and Adedayo went rigid, his fingers splayed, his legs locked straight, his head back and the muscles in his neck standing out. He felt a consciousness, more than one, poking through his mind, picking out his language, sorting through what he knew of the world, and then his knees wobbled and he went floppy and staggered back a few steps before collapsing.

A hand emerged from the box.

The hand became a forearm and then there was an elbow, and the elbow pressed down on the table for leverage and a shoulder appeared and then a head, a head with a black veil and horns poking out, a head far too big to be squeezing through a box the size of a biscuit tin.

This thing, this being, was called the Sathariel. Adedayo didn’t know how he knew that – he just did. It was like there was a swimming pool full of weird knowledge and he’d just cannonballed into it. He watched the Sathariel climb out of the box and stand by the table, his black robes long and ragged, his breathing heavy, his horns sharp.

He had mottled green hands tipped with black nails, and from his robes he drew a gnarled staff as tall as he was. The smell he brought with him was pungent and made Adedayo think of people screaming.

Something else came out of the box: a tentacle, wet and dripping. It probed the air, then found the table, and a second one came out to join it, then another. Then there were a dozen tentacles, some as thin as a cat’s tongue, some as thick as an elephant’s trunk, and once they’d gained purchase they lifted the Cythraul straight up out of the box.

The Cythraul, the Many-Tentacled One, hid most of his body beneath a robe of soiled crimson, but Adedayo caught a flash of pale, squirming flesh that made his stomach roil. The Cythraul had a wide, gaping mouth lined with small, sharp teeth, like a lamprey eel, and a single black, blinking eye. He looked down at Adedayo and then, thankfully, away.

There was another creature in the box. The last of the Apocalypse Kings unfurled himself from his confinement and stepped into the bedroom. Tall and thin, black-haired and pale, long-faced and red-eyed, the Deathless wore a robe of rags and filth that fitted him like kingly vestments.

He looked round Adedayo’s bedroom and breathed in, then smiled.

“Smells like feet,” he said, and all three of them vanished.