Death animations

The body goes stiff and bone-white, then clatters apart across the floor.

A glance at the wrist, a shrug - well, that's the shift. A lazy two-finger salute, a punch-clock 'ding', and you clock out for good.

A little spin, a shiny gold flash, and the body pops into a fountain of coins.

Knocked back with a loud POP and gone in a little shower of confetti.

A soft breeze lifts the arms and the body goes white and fluffy as a dandelion clock. One more breath of wind and it blows away as a cloud of drifting seeds.

Sags like a punctured balloon with a sad wheeze, then sinks into the floor.

Spins faster and faster until the body is a little whirl of sand blowing away.

The body sags, greys over and crumbles away into a drifting cloud of dust.

Sinks to both knees and quietly fades from the feet up.

Back of the hand to the forehead, one dramatic swoon onto the floor, and a few dizzy stars.

Falls back like a pillow in a pillow fight and bursts into slowly floating feathers.

Shading the eyes to look up at the sky... BONK. One fat hailstone bounces off the head, the body frosts over with a wobble and clatters to the floor as a heap of hail.

Falls flat and runs into a pool of ink, splattering black droplets.

Time stops mid-stumble. Three ticks ring out and the body blinks away with the last one.

One showman's flourish and a snap of the fingers: poof, you're gone in a puff of lilac smoke, and a single playing card flutters down where you stood.

A hiccup, a wobble, a slow pirouette on one heel - then you go stiff as a tavern plank and topple flat on your back with a thud, seeing stars.

Spins on the spot and folds itself up into nothing, leaving a flutter of paper.

The body folds flat like a paper cut-out and flutters apart into scraps.

One surprised hop and the body pops like a party popper. Confetti everywhere.

Turns to water and collapses into a splashing puddle on the floor.

You go stiff as a clock hand, lift off your heels and tick over sideways - twelve, one, two, three - then drop flat and clatter apart.

A violent jolt, and the body bursts into a crimson mist that hangs in the air.

Rusts over in a heartbeat, stiff as a statue, then crumbles into flaking metal.

The body twitches like a broken robot, spits sparks and flickers out.

A puff of thick smoke at the feet. When it clears, there is nobody there.

Sinks to the knees, turns to packed snow and drifts away from the head down.

The body topples backwards and fades, and a tiny wisp drifts up out of it.

Freezes mid-step and flickers like a bad signal until the picture blinks out.

A cartoon kaboom: the body blows apart in a puff of fire and smoke.

A clumsy stumble and a face-plant into a puff of dust, then the body fades away.

A gust spins the body round, it turns to autumn leaves, and the wind carries them off.

Three hiccups, each bigger than the last. The fourth one is fatal.

Floats up gently and comes apart into drifting cherry blossom petals.

A soap bubble closes around the body and floats it up off the floor. Then... pop.

Flames catch the body and roar up. What is left is charcoal, and the wind blows it away as ash.

The body stiffens into warm wax with a flame on its head, melts down, and is snuffed out in a curl of smoke.

Clutches the chest as frost races over the body, then shatters into skittering ice.

Weathers to green copper in seconds and topples into a heap of statue pieces.

Violet crystal crawls up the body until it is a gem statue, then it cracks into glittering shards.

Arcs of electricity snap around a rigid, shaking body until it flashes blue and drops.

You strike a stiff, formal pose - chin up, hand on heart - and freeze into a sepia oil painting. Then the old canvas flakes away from the feet up, until only dust hangs in the frame.

A blast of frost freezes the body solid, arms still raised, and the ice statue sinks into a cold mist.

A cold fog rolls in at knee height. Shivering, the body looks left, then right, for a way out - greys into a silhouette and is swallowed from the feet up.

One hit too many: knocked flying, the body turns to glass and smashes on landing.

You wave a sparkler in happy loops - until it fizzes down to your fingers, races up your arm, and you go off with a crackling pop of golden sparks.

Arms locked stiff overhead, you tick-tock from side to side like a metronome - faster, wider, faster - until the mechanism jams dead upright with a clunk. One beat of silence... and you split apart into splinters.

Kneels, goes pale and breaks into a cloud of dusty moth wings that flutter away.

Jerks and twitches as the circuits overload, glows electric blue and blows apart in sparks.

Sways, loses footing and is dragged down into the floor as if by a current.

The body dries into sand from the head down and pours into a heap that the wind scatters.

A tiny falling star bonks you on the head and you wobble about, dizzy stars circling. You squint up just in time to see its big sister coming - SPLAT, you're flattened into a pancake on the floor, little stars still spinning round it.

The body goes pitch black and drips into its own shadow, which slides away across the floor.

Head lolling, arms out in front, you sleepwalk off through the night streets of Hollowgate - paler and fainter with every step, shedding drowsy after-images behind you, until nobody is left to wake up.

Something winds you tighter and tighter into a crouch, ratchet by ratchet... then the mainspring lets go. BOING - BOING - higher with every bounce, until on the third the spring snaps and you clatter down in a heap of coils.

Too much candy. The body wobbles, flushes pink and pops into a shower of sweets.

Brambles wrap the body as it kneels; it turns to grass and crumbles into leaves and petals.

A green cloud blooms up, the body chokes and sickens green, then slumps and melts into a bubbling puddle.

A dry gust bowls the body clean over. It curls up into a ball of straw and goes rolling away across the floor, shedding twigs, until it falls apart.

Hardens into a wax figure mid-step, then droops and melts away with a curl of smoke.

Reaches for help as the flames catch, glows like a coal and burns away from the feet up.

Like a wind-up toy running out, the body slows to a stop, and springs and cogs pop out of it.

Glows toxic green, hisses and melts into a bubbling puddle with green fumes rising.

A rumble from above, a wall of snow, and the body crumbles under it in a white cloud.

The body throws its arms wide like a cloak, darkens, and bursts into a screeching swarm of bats.

The body sinks to its knees under a rising crimson moon, glows red, and bursts in a wave of blood-light.

A creak overhead: the ballroom chandelier of Hollowgate, burning with cold ghost-flame, snaps its chain. You throw your arms over your head - CRASH - and it lands in a ring around you. You stand up, wobble, see stars... and sit down hard for good.

You flare up ice-blue, drop into a sprinter's crouch and blast off diagonally into the night sky as a comet, a long glittering tail streaming out behind you.

A tragic swoon, and the body comes undone into a swirl of red rose petals.

Time's clerk stamps you PAST. You snap stiff as a record card, turn on your heel, tip flat in mid-air - and slide neatly, head first, into a slot in the dark. Thunk. Filed.

Frost races over the body and locks it mid-stagger. A crack, a beat of silence, then it bursts into ice.

The floor hisses and steams; the body hops from one scalded foot to the other... then a geyser erupts beneath it and launches it sky-high, where it bursts and rains back down as spray.

The body falls backwards, and a glowing ghost of the player sits up out of it and floats away.

A riffling ring of playing cards whirls in and slaps onto you. You stiffen into a paper-white card figure, teeter... and fold over into a fluttering heap of cards.

You lift a hand lantern against the dark and peer about. The flame gutters - and you flicker with it, brighter, dimmer, brighter... until a cold breath blows you out like a wick. The lantern drops and rolls across the empty floor, still burning.

A single bolt from above. The body lights up, chars black and blows apart into embers.

The body looks up just in time to see a meteor land on it. Nothing but a smoking crater remains.

Freezes like a reflection, two mirror copies split off, and the body smashes like glass.

One long yawn, and the body sits down on the floor for a little rest, arms on its knees. It nods off; moss creeps over it, spores puff up, and it settles into a soft green mound.

Spectral chains whirl in and bind the body tight, then drag it straight down through the floor.

The body glitches between frames, then deletes itself line by line in a shower of pixels.

A violet portal opens under the feet. The body drops straight through and the portal snaps shut.

Kneels as a column of fire roars up and burns the body away to drifting ash.

Struggles and claws at the air while the floor swallows the body inch by inch.

Far above, the clocktower bell tolls - and the sound rolls right through you. Hands over your ears, you buzz with the second toll; on the third you ring out like the bell itself and blur apart into fading echoes, carried off on the last of the note.

Stinging salt wind: rubbing at the eyes, the body crusts over white while salt crystals sprout at its feet. Then the tide rushes in from all sides and the salt figure simply dissolves away.

Whirls inside a growing sandstorm until the body is blown apart grain by grain.

A sigil of glowing rings snaps shut beneath you and lifts you off your feet. Ring after ring climbs your body, erasing you slice by slice, until the last one cinches shut at your head and the sigil stamps out.

Petrified mid-scream, the body becomes a stone statue, cracks, and crumbles into rubble.

Twelve hour-stones ring the floor. You raise an arm to the sky as the dial's gnomon and set into stone; the sun arcs over and sinks, and with the last light you crumble into the sand of the dial.

Points at the sky. The sky answers: three bolts strike and leave nothing behind.

Time cracks around the body: it stutters, leaves echoes, freezes among floating shards, then is gone.

A gilded masquerade mask snaps over your face. You claw at it, struggle, and rip it away - but there's nothing underneath. The empty costume crumples into a heap of velvet, and the mask drops on top, eyes still glowing.

Ticks along like a wind-up toy, slows, stops, and falls apart into rusty clockwork.

Lifts off the ground glowing softly and rises into the sky trailing little stars.

A beam of light finds the fallen. Wings unfold, a halo lights up, and they rise into the sky.

Rain? No problem: up pops the umbrella, hand on hip, very pleased. Thunder grumbles. A glance up at that nice pointy tip... and the lightning finds it. Charred, smoking, the body crumbles and the umbrella drops.

A crackling ball of lightning drifts in. Curious, the body follows it with its eyes and reaches out one finger... ZAP. Locked rigid and buzzing, it is sucked into the orb, which hangs there for a heartbeat and pops.

A banshee rises out of the floor behind you and lets out a wail that shakes the street. The shrieking rings roll through you - you clap your hands over your ears and buckle as you turn to glass, cracks spidering through you - and on the high note you burst like a wine glass.

Violet fire that burns black takes hold from the feet up. The body sinks to its knees and burns away from the head down.

The floor turns out to be the inside of a clock. The gears catch your boot, spin you round and round as they drag you down into the works, and the machine coughs back up a fountain of cogs.

The sea closes over you. Weightless, arms drifting like a sea fan, you sink into a reef while little fish circle; coral grows up and over you, blooms bright, bleaches white - and crumbles into pale sand and bubbles.

Crystals spread up the arm, drag the body to its knees and bend it back, arms wide, until it shatters into violet shards.

You fall... and you're standing again. You fall again, the same way, beside the ghost of the last time - and again. On the third time round the loop snaps like glass and every one of you shatters at once.

Chains whip round you and lock tight. You strain and wriggle as the drum rolls... a puff of smoke, a shower of cards - and the empty chains clatter to the floor. The great escape. Permanently.

A giant clock rises behind the body, its hands racing. At the stroke of the hour the body turns to brass and falls apart into cogs.

The ground lurches and the body windmills to keep its feet. A glowing fissure tears open right between them - one foot slips, the arms shoot up, and the earth swallows it and grinds shut, leaving a smoking ridge of rock.

A fortune teller's crystal ball floats up before you, swirling with violet mist. You lean in to read your fate, recoil at what you see - and are sucked inside, the glass clouding over.

Ages a million years in a second - stooping, hunching, turning to stone - and crumbles into sand.

A howling gale. Shielding its face and clinging to a whipping banner, the body is shoved back step by step while the wind peels it away, layer after ghostly layer - until the last gust tears the banner loose and takes everything else with it.

Gravity rings stack up overhead and press down. The body strains against them, buckles, and is squashed flat into the floor.

One last moment to smell the roses... a puff of pollen, a twitch of the nose. Ah... ah... AH... the head tips back further each time - and the sneeze is so enormous it blows the body apart into a cloud of pollen and petals. The rose drops.

The floor glows red and shadowy hands claw their way out. They grab hold and drag the body, kicking, down into the fire.

The circus drum rolls. You throw the crowd a showman's arm, tuck into a ball... BOOM - you're fired off into the night in a cloud of smoke and confetti, and a moment later a tiny star twinkles far away.

Your connection dies mid-step: you stutter forward, rubber-band back to where you started, freeze in a grey default A-pose... and get unloaded, piece by piece.

A music box chimes and you rise en pointe like its little porcelain dancer, turning slower and slower as the tune winds down - until the last note, a tilt, and you shatter.

A rose in one hand, the other round the waist of a partner no one can see, you waltz across the Hollowgate ballroom - one, two, three - turning faster and faster, until you whirl apart into a storm of rose petals and the rose falls alone.

Silk spirals up from the feet and wraps the body, arms crossed, into a chrysalis. It glows, it trembles, it beats like a heart - then splits open, and a cloud of monarch butterflies bursts out and flutters away.

A treasure chest thuds down in front of you and creaks open, glittering with gold. You lean in for a closer look... SNAP. The chest gulps you down, wobbles, hops twice with a satisfied creak - and burps up a single coin.

Under a merciless sun the body staggers, parched, and lunges for the shimmering water just ahead. Copies of itself waver in the heat - and it turns out the body was the mirage all along. It ripples and evaporates.

A tall gilt mirror rises out of the floor behind you. You glance back - and your reflection seizes you. Dragged backwards, arms reaching for help, you turn to quicksilver and sink into the glass; its surface ripples, and the mirror keeps you.

A crow lands on your shoulder. Another settles on your head. Then a dozen more wheel round you, cawing. You flail at them - and the whole murder bursts outward at once, carrying you off with it, leaving only black feathers drifting down.

A giant pocket watch swings before your eyes. Left... right... you sway along with it as it ticks. Your head grows heavy and drops, your knees fold like a puppet's with the strings cut, and you crumple to the floor fast asleep - drifting apart into silver motes.

Spins faster and faster, stops dead as a prism and splits into six rainbow copies before vanishing in a flash.

A shadow grows underfoot, the body looks up in horror, and a giant grinning jack-o'-lantern lands on it with a splat.

You raise a glowing alchemist's orb and drink it down. A golden transmutation circle flares under your feet and you turn to liquid mercury, sagging into a shining silver pool.

The body skips frames, splits into colour channels and comes loose from reality, piece by floating piece, before the error clears it.

A giant alarm bell bursts into life just out of reach overhead and will NOT stop ringing. You swat and jump at it for the snooze button, rattling on the spot like an old wind-up alarm clock - until the last BRRRING pops you into a shower of springs and cogs.

Yanked about by shadow strings in a jerky little dance, shadow copies peeling off, until the strings are cut.

The body is lifted off its feet as its soul pours out in a whirlwind of spirits, spiralling up until nothing is left.

A giant spider drops down on its thread, spins the body into a silk cocoon in a blink and hauls it up into the dark.

A spindle of light appears overhead and catches the loose thread of your time. You spin, faster and faster, unravelling from the feet up as you're wound onto it - until the full spool snaps free and zips away into the dark.

Shields its eyes from a blinding light, is lifted into the beam, curls up into a ball of light and collapses into a tiny star.

Tugged by the wind, then lifted spinning into the eye of a storm; every bolt jolts it stiff until the fourth blows it apart.

You swell into a red giant, straining and bloating, burning deeper crimson - then your core gives in. You crush into a tight white-hot ball and blow apart in a shell of stars.

A tavern lute appears in your hands and you play yourself a farewell. With every falling note a little more of you fades to moonlight; you sway, eyes closed, and on the last chord a string snaps - and you scatter like the end of a song.

Hears it coming, braces - and is swept sideways, tumbled through the water and dumped on the floor as a puddle.

Time turns you over like an hourglass: you're lifted off your feet, flipped head-down in mid-air - and your hours pour out of you, draining away grain by grain into a little heap of sand.

The magician's oldest trick, with you as the bird: a giant iron birdcage slams down over you. You rattle the bars - then the cage shrinks to the size of a fist with you inside, hangs there a heartbeat... and with a flick, cage and all vanish in a burst of feathers.

A speck of void opens in the chest. The body curls around it, drains to black and is sucked into a single point that bursts in a ring of violet.

A rip in time cracks open right behind you. You startle back a step - one step too many - windmill on the edge of nothing, and topple in, tumbling head over heels down into the void until you're a speck. The tear zips itself shut.

The arms grow up like branches and roots spread from the feet; the tree dries out, droops and crumbles to ash.

A howling wraith tears out of the dark behind you and flies straight through your chest. It drags all your colour out after it like a ribbon of green light; the grey husk left standing sways, folds, and crumbles to dust.

Soft rain begins. The body turns its face up to it with open arms, kneels, and bows to the earth - becoming damp soil that the rain washes into the ground. The clouds part, and a single red rose grows and blooms where it knelt.

Golden resin drips from above. The body tries to step away, but each movement gets slower and slower as the resin pools round its feet and creeps up over it; it sets mid-stride like an insect in amber, topples over with a thud, and cracks into honey-coloured shards.

Glowing runes circle the body and lift it from the floor. The curse turns it to stone from the feet up, and the statue crumbles into green ash.

The great bronze bell of the Hollowgate belfry drops out of the dark beside you, already swinging. The first toll rings you stiff as cast bronze, the second cracks you from crown to hip - and on the third swing it tears loose from its yoke and comes down on you, scattering you in a shower of bronze flakes.

A great clock behind you starts to race and the years you borrowed come due, torn off like calendar pages. A decade: you stoop. Another: grey and trembling, a hand to your back. One more: down on a knee - and you crumble to dust that blows away on the wind.

Trapped in a giant bubble: knocks on the walls, gives up, curls up and floats away until it pops.

The arms become clock hands, ticking round slower and slower in front of a giant clock until they stop and the body falls apart.

A spotlight thunks on. You bow to the left, to the right and a last deep bow to the front as roses land at your feet - then the spotlight narrows to a pinpoint and goes dark, taking you with it.

Kneels with hands clasped under a new halo; a beam of light comes down and lifts the body into the sky.

Your eyes grow heavy and you tip back into a dream, lying on the air above a swirling portal as pillow feathers drift up. You start to sink - then the jolt, that falling-dream kick that should wake you... too late. The dream closes over you.

A black hole opens above the body and lifts it off the floor. It stretches, spins and vanishes into the dark.

Your life flashes before your eyes - out loud. You snap through your best moments (a wave, a sprint, a cheer, a bow), each one left behind as a sepia echo in a ring around you. They fade one by one, and the last flash of the shutter takes you too.

Out on the dunes the sky goes dark and static lifts the body onto its toes, arms floating, sand grains rising. Then a colossal bolt: the sand fuses round it into a glittering lightning-glass sculpture, which creaks, cracks... and shatters across the dunes.

You spring up and land hunched like a gargoyle on a Hollowgate rooftop, arms swept back, chin jutting at the moon. Stone crawls over you and your eyes burn red; a raven settles on your head. Then cracks of fire split you, and you topple face-first and smash on the cobbles.

You light the fuses and rockets scream up around you, bursting red, gold and blue. Then you notice the fuse fizzing at your own feet - and for the big finish you go up yourself, in the grandest firework of all.

Every flourish leaves an illusory double behind, stepping out left, right and behind you - which one is real? None of them: you crack like glass, and every double folds into a shower of playing cards.

A gate of light rises behind the fallen and swings open. They float gently backwards through it, and the doors of light close behind them.

You clutch your head as the colour drains out of you, leaving a grey, hollow shell. It staggers, sinks to its knees and topples forward - and a pale soul slips out and drifts away.

A jack-o'-lantern floats down and opens its grin. The body glows, comes apart into a stream of light that pours into the pumpkin, and Jack drifts away into the night, cackling and lit up from inside.

Ghostly lanterns drift out of the Hollowgate fog and circle you in a slow, silent procession. Your body dims as your light gathers in your cupped hands; an empty lantern drifts in to take your flame, and then it joins the line as the procession files away into the dark.

Spent at last, you drive a greatsword slantwise into the floor as a tattered Vesper war banner rises behind you, and sink to one knee leaning on it for one final vigil. Steel creeps over you until you're only an empty suit of armour; the helm bows, and the whole of it collapses with a clatter as the banner falls.

A last slow waltz with nobody under a rising moon, then an arch back into the moonlight and gone.

The floor turns to a churning whirlpool that drags the body round and round. A great sea serpent coils up out of the depths, eyes glowing, wraps it tight - and hauls it down into the vortex in a towering spout of water.

Reaching out for one last grab, the body turns to solid gold where it stands. It gleams for a moment, then bursts into a fountain of coins.

At dusk, a silhouette in the glow of a low red sun sweeps its arms back like wings. Starlings peel off it one by one and gather overhead into a vast, swirling murmuration - the last of the body streams off into the flock, and the whole flock wheels away.

Three hundred years overdue. Grimoires start dropping out of the dark of the lost library - one, then two, then a whole avalanche - burying you to the chin while you shield your head and wave for help. Then the biggest tome of all slams down on the pile in a cloud of dust and loose pages.

A clock's giant brass pendulum swings down through the arena, lower with every pass. You duck the first, leap the second, then smugly dust off your shoulder - and the third sweeps you clean away in a spray of clockwork.

Falls to one knee, catches fire, then rises on blazing wings and burns away to embers from the feet up.

The forge of Hollowgate claims you. An anvil slams down at your side and a spectral smith's hammer rings on it - once, twice, three times - and with every blow you glow hotter, red to white. Then HISS: you're quenched in a gout of steam, set to black iron, and crack apart.

A spectral scythe rises out of the dark and reaps in one clean sweep. The soul slips out and rises; the empty body falls apart.

The Hourmonger's iron-bound strongbox rises at your feet and creaks open. Your borrowed hours are repossessed - golden lights wrenched out of your chest one by one and swallowed by the box - and, emptied, you go hollow as glass, tip forward and shatter.

A coffin bursts up out of the ground behind the body, flings its lid open and drags it in. The lid slams, chains lock it shut, and it sinks back into the earth under a fresh headstone.

Looks up, points, turns and runs for it - and dives just as the meteor lands.

The body fills with a night sky and floats up, weightless. Then it drifts apart piece by piece, slowly scattering into stardust.

You come loose into a glowing nebula of pink and teal gas, drifting apart in a slow cloud. The cloud swirls, collapses on itself - and ignites into a newborn star hanging where your heart was.

The final blow freezes the second in place. You topple backwards in extreme slow motion as the camera creeps in, sparks and shards hanging in the air and the second hand barely moving - then the second runs out, time snaps back, and you hit the floor and burst apart all at once.

The clock springs forward an hour - and you were standing in it. You blur through a jittering time-lapse as the hands race, then you simply aren't there any more: only a person-shaped hole of void is left behind, slowly sealing itself shut.

A ring of candles flares up around you and the séance begins. You are hauled off the floor, limp as a puppet, while spirits whisper round the circle and the flames stretch tall and violet. Something answers - every candle gutters out at once, and in the dark you drop and vanish in a gasp of smoke.

A bubble of stopped time snaps shut around you mid-gasp and you set like rose glass, frozen where you stand. Then the bubble crushes down into a single glowing marble that drops into the floor like a coin into a slot - your moment, kept for later.

A whole year passes in a breath while the sun arcs overhead: spring blossoms, a golden summer bask, hands behind the head, autumn leaves falling as the body droops - and winter, kneeling and frozen under a rising moon, until the snow blows it away with one last blossom.

Mid-stride, a star pins you where you stand - then another, and another, at your head, hands and feet. Lines of light join them up, your body crumbles away like dusk, and your constellation, the Wanderer, is left walking across the sky.

The blow lands; you stagger, a hand to your chest, and sink to your knees as you turn to grey ash. Embers glow through the cracks... then you crumble and drift away on the wind.

Night falls and the northern lights unfurl across the sky in green and violet curtains. Spellbound, one hand reaching for them, the body's colours are drawn off sideways into the aurora, layer after glowing layer - until it is nothing but ribbons of light and a drift of glittering frost.

A singularity opens overhead, pulls the body up, spins it thin and swallows it - then the universe starts again with a blinding bang.

The floor splits into glowing cracks and a volcano erupts behind you, blotting out the sky with ash. Lava bombs slam down left, right and behind; the last one knocks you to your knees, you melt into a pool of magma - and it cools, hissing, into black glass.

The sun rises behind the fallen and the moon swallows it. In the totality they stand as a black silhouette, then burn away in a storm of crimson ash.

You notice the camera. You walk right up to it and knock on the glass - tap, tap, TAP - and the screen cracks. Through the crack you're dragged clean out of the game, breaking into pixels as the world blinks to black.

The cold comes all at once: frost races over the floor, breath steams, teeth chatter. A frost moon rises as a glacier bursts up around you; you reach for the moon and freeze mid-reach under a dome of ice - until the glacier calves with a thunderous crack and everything shatters at once.

Falls to a knee, sees the golden gates open, stands, raises a sword and walks into the light on golden wings.

The dead of Hollowgate come out to greet you. Pale townsfolk rise from the floor in a ring and drift round you, moaning softly; they lift you off your feet as your colour bleeds away, until you are as pale as they are - and with a cold sigh they bear you off with them into the dark.

The Great Work, performed on yourself. A transmutation circle blazes beneath you and you pass through the four alchemical stages - black, white, gold, red - each one forcing you lower, until you are pressed into a philosopher's stone of red crystal.

Midnight strikes on the Hollowgate ballroom. A chandelier of candles blazes high above the floor and gilded masks whirl round you like dancers as you spin among them - until the music stops dead. Every mask turns to stare. One floats down onto your face... and you collapse into it, leaving only a mask spinning on the floor.

A giant clock rises under a witch's moon and its hands race to midnight. The body floats up through a hex circle, the bell tolls three times, and on the last stroke it bursts into a storm of bats.

A colossal moon rises over the sea and the tide obeys it: the water climbs around you, droplets fall upward and globes of water float free. You drift, weightless, curled towards the moon, turn to water yourself - then the whole tide comes crashing down and you crash with it.

The sky over Hollowgate goes black with wings. A colossal raven descends on a storm of feathers, eyes burning crimson, and hovers over you. You turn, stagger, frozen under its stare - it spreads its wings and swoops down over you, and when it beats back up into the dark, a thousand crows burst from where you stood.

A rift opens and your future self steps out of it - a glowing double, a few seconds older. You both reach out, and your fingertips touch. Two of you can't exist in the same hour: the clock inside you spins both ways at once, and you annihilate each other in a blinding implosion.

Space begins to turn around you. You're lifted, tipped over and curled up in the heart of a spinning galaxy whose arms wheel faster and faster, wringing you into its core - which ignites and fires twin slanting jets of light, one up through the sky and one down into the floor.

The forge-fires of Hollowgate roar up in a ring around you. You glow, sag and melt into a pool of white-hot metal; a colossal smith's hammer swings over from the dark and pounds the pool on three thundering beats - and out of it rises a greatsword, blazing, planted where you stood. You've been reforged.

They fall, then time runs backwards and pulls them up again, alive for one heartbeat. The clock stops, and the moment shatters with them in it.

The hollow circus wakes for one last show. Drumroll, a crack of the whip, and a whirl of playing cards pours into a blazing ring at your back. You tip your hat, take a sweeping bow and walk backwards into the ring - which spins shut in a burst of confetti.

A giant hourglass drops behind the fallen and the sand starts to run. Their time runs with it: they crumble into a pile of sand, and the glass turns over on an empty floor.

Five planets slide out of the dark and lock into a line slanting down the sky towards you, one chime at a time. As the last one aligns, their combined pull tears you off your feet, stretches you out across the gap and swallows you into the nearest world - and the line breaks apart.

The ground splits and the Great Wheel of the Lost - a clockwork gear as tall as a tower - grinds up behind you. Its teeth catch you and carry you up and over in a great arc; at the very top you turn to brass and fall apart into cogs as the machinery sinks back into the dark.

Black chains drag you to your knees. The Gloomguard's ghost steps out of the dark behind you, his greatsword rises... and falls. You come apart into a hundred whispering souls that sink back into the earth.

A colossal clock looms out of the dark and strikes twelve, and every stroke lashes a thread of gold into you until you're set like a statue. Then it strikes a thirteenth time - an hour with no mark on the dial - and takes you as one: crushed into a single glowing mark that flies into its face as the whole dial shatters.

The lost library wakes. Grimoires tear free of unseen shelves and wheel round you like crows in a storm of loose pages, and a great tome opens in the air to read you - backwards. You're unwritten line by line from the head down, the last of you is drawn into its pages, and the book snaps shut on nothing.

Time freezes mid-step; the body turns to glass, cracks and hangs in the air in pieces, then lightning breaks everything at once.

Every clock in the Lost strikes zero at once. Three clock faces wheel in out of the dark with their hands running backwards to nothing; the colour drains out of you until you're a black silhouette in the glare - then the clocks slam into you and time restarts in a blinding white shockwave.