“As he surveyed the torchlight, his shadow cast companion — a luprinon, the massive wolf-like creature that had been bound to him since his mastery trials — materialised at his side with the silent precision of a beast that existed partially in the physical world and partially in the Shadow Realm and that regarded the boundary between the two as a suggestion rather than a rule. The luprinon's coat was the colour of deep twilight, shifting between purple and black as the wind ruffled its fur, and its eyes — amber, slitted, ancient — tracked the army below with the calculating attention of a predator evaluating not individual prey but the movement patterns of an entire herd.”