Marcus Vogel peers down at the heathen city of Cyme. Shadow Wand in hand, he sits astride a dragon on the Northern Spine’s jagged, moonlit pinnacle, snow crunching beneath the broken dragon’s feet. An icy wind whips against the gauzy gray shield Vogel’s thrown up around both himself and the multi-eyed raven perched on his shoulder as he watches the web of Shadow undulating over the rune-marked dome encasing the valley below.

The Amaz are trapped, he gloats. Like insects under a cup.

He watches, transfixed, as the fog swirls around the dome’s scarlet Amaz runes. The world-altering sight of Shadow power beginning its engagement with high-level fortress runes prompts a tremor of anticipation through his firelines. He pulls in a shuddering breath.

Amazakaraan, that dogged bastion of heathen defiance, finally about to fall.

Serves them right, the blasphemous whores, Vogel seethes. For their hostility toward the Magedom. And for harboring an Alfsigr Icaral beast in their midst.

His righteous fury notches higher.

Never again will the Amaz defy the Holy Magedom.

The Reaping Times have come.

Over a thousand Mages on dragonback line the Spine’s apex, along with a contingent of deadly Alfsigr Marfoir. And positioned just below him on an outcropping of ice-glittering stone are Fallon Bane and her brothers, Damion and Sylus, the Level Five siblings ready to advance the invasion’s leading edge. With righteously brutal Commander Fallon Bane at the helm.

Fallon turns and meets Vogel’s gaze, green eyes flashing. Vogel holds her stare with a nod of approval as he wonders, not for the first time, why the Ancient One charged evil-tainted Elloren Gardner Grey with Black Witch power instead of ever-righteous Fallon Bane.

“The flawed vessel can be purified.”

The holy verse lights in Vogel’s mind, suffusing him with a rush of hope for redemption.

Redemption for Elloren Grey.

Redemption for himself.

And for the whole of Erthia.

His grasping hope intensifies as he scans the increasingly Shadow-hazed valley. The weight of his multi-eyed raven is a centering ballast, the creature a window, when he closes his eyes and focuses through the eyes of his many-eyed ones. Vogel basks in the glow of the Ancient One’s gift of this power as well as His divine fury. He can feel that fury purifying his lines, everything going according to the Ancient One’s Most Holy Plan.

The Icaral of Prophecy is dead.

The Shadow Wand has been transformed by Holy Purpose.

And the Black Witch...

Vogel glances at his green-glimmering wand hand and revels in the Ancient One’s unexpected leading—a leading that will place Elloren fully under his control, along with the Great Wand of Myth that the Ancient One led to her. He sighted the Great Wand’s energy, granting her perfect aim when she took down his scorpios, her emergence as a warrior compelling to behold. And now, the two Wands of Power will soon be united in defense of the Magedom.