POV: Gretchen Stinkford
The air in the Iron-Mist Valley was no longer gas; it was a pressurized liquid of malice. I stood atop the jagged ridge overlooking the Royal Valley, my form barely recognizable as anything that had once breathed. My skin had become a translucent, bruised parchment, stretched over a skeleton of obsidian. Every time I inhaled, the Shadow-Legion—my children of smoke and soot—exhaled in unison.
I was winning. I could feel the delicious, slow-motion collapse of the North. The "Two Moons" were trapped in their white stone cage, and their "Aegis" was nothing but a flickering candle in a hurricane. I had spent eight months sharpening the void, and now, I was watching it cut.
"Scratch at the glass, my darlings," I whispered, my voice a dry hiss that carried on the psychi
