Excerpt:

Lutia also told her of a realm she had not yet heard of; the Shadow Realm. It was where lost and unaligned souls lingered after death, a source of power to those who would warp their minds to weilding it, but mostly a grey realm of lost souls and strange, highly adaptive creatures that longed for nothing more than to feel the sun on their faces and once again live in the Realm of the Living. They had found the torn gate and Thrond had faced his own other self, a creature as powerful as he and even more deperate to escape. Lutis said Thrond was ascended; he had gained the blessings of his God and now he was to stand guard at the gate for eternity, or until someone came to relieve him of his duties.

Most of Kia's people now lived inside the barricade towns. The Marquis Belesgar still oversaw Mitchum and coordinated activity in many of the others. Anna was glad to hear he was safe and still making his pistols, but she had no desire to return to the city and face him just yet.

It mattered not, however, as Lutis was eading her into a new land, the southern most country of the Scarred lands, Schayelle. It was a vast, sloping country, made of a mixture of plains and forests, marshes and dunes, rolling down at all sides except the north, down, down towards the great blue ocean which few dared to sail upon and never far from shore. It's people lived in small vaiallages all governed by a female Elder. These wisened old women, made tough by salt winds and spirits would meet at great moots in the centre of the country to make the great and important decisions.

At least this was the hope. The country had only recently been set free by the reteat of it's once powerful rulers who had come from over the sea. The Ballians, a cruel, warlike people who had swept the country like the waves they arrived upon now receeded just as swiftly, dragging a few choice slaves and treasures with them but otherwise leaving the people with more than enough means to re-establish their old order. However, order would only be won when the bandits who were trying to take any advantages they could see from the unsure situation were stamped down. There were also mages to consider.

Whole cadres of black-clad Sinister mages were roaming the country, setting up rituals and terrifying the populace. Thei appearance would have been enough; to ascend throught the Rite of the Sinister was to cut out your own eye to give greater sight to your arcane senses. This dead organ was then bound to the right hand which was usually what the caster used when directing their incantations at their victims. To begin with it was just a pair of bloody bandages and a bulge upon the hand, but the eyeball could never be removed. It sank and rotted there, the bandages congealing and everything becoming matted and sealed against the caster's palm. The eye socket would heal, in time. Some kept bandages over it, others chose shaped eye-patches. Some just covered it with their hair, the easier to shock people with who came too close or asked too much. Their spells were also for affecting the body; spells to cause injury and suffering to the physical forms of their victims, and just for their own amusment the Sinister of Schayelle took to removing the right eyes of their victims as well. They wanted land, they wanted power, and it was believed they wanted it for someone yet more powerful than themselves.