With a sense of déjà vu, Agnes packed her things. She was going to be staying with her grandmother in Hova again. She picked up her fully packed suitcase and as she started to go downstairs the thoughts began running through her head. It was as if something was missing, something she ought to remember. Something hideously black. But for the life of her she couldn’t remember what.

In the top of the tower on the smaller of the islands that made up the Samloqs sat that night’s watch. He looked up at the starry sky through the opening that was the tower’s only window – and there, something was there. A giant black shadow swooped past and blocked out the light. The preacher shuddered. The next moment he almost fell out of the tower. The creature high above him had turned, revealing an enormous pair of wings and clouds of sooty black smoke billowing from its nostrils.

Naz-Halham could not erase the Sibyl’s words from his mind. “The time is come when I, Moros, shall rise and break my bonds. I enjoin upon thee to ally thyself with the people from the sea, whose arrival in Amornia has been prophesied since before my sisters and brothers fettered my person with their treacherous chains.”