Lord Malakor, the grumpy, shadow-king of his own, private, and now rapidly-falling-apart universe, was having a very bad day. His army of ghosts was being systematically busted. His spooky castle was being revealed to be nothing more than a spooky-looking cloud. And his brand-new, shiny, reality-bending super-weapon was currently in the process of turning itself into a universe-ending bomb.
And to top it all off, the cheerful, glowing, and ridiculously optimistic Wildflower was still punching him in his shadowy, metaphorical face.
He was a god. A king. A master of shadows and fear. And he was losing. Badly.
He looked at the overloading Reality Loom, which was now pulsing with a wild, angry light and making a sound like the universe gargling rocks. Then he looked at Ryan, whose own, golden-green light was now burning brighter and stronger than his own.
