It was as if something moved - it was as if something disappeared. Jirelle did not know what to make out of what she saw. A dark, churning mass seemed to hide behind the first village houses, blurring the contours in a nauseating manner. For some time Jirelle had been aware that the fear of Sh'tin could not be attributed to a childish fear of the dark. Ziv's story about the Darkness, all the training they had been given, and the level-headed viewpoint of their superiors had brought the fact home to her that one could not take Sh'tin too seriously, but nothing and nobody could have prepared her for what she was facing now.

Very, very slowly but steadily those houses were being swallowed by a darkness deeper than even the blackest night, blacker even than Ir'yns cape. It was so completely dark that Jirelle did not understand how she could see it moving, how she knew it consisted of seething whirls - still she saw and knew, without a shadow of a doubt. It was alive, this Darkness. One moment she was looking at a couple of houses with something black behind them; the next moment, those houses were merely holes in a deep lightlessness, holes that became smaller and smaller, inch by inch losing territory to an evil entity. The image was unreal, as if the laws of nature she was used to no longer applied.
Feeling giddy she averted her gaze and looked to her team mates. Right then she felt how that giddiness was enforced, knocking her over with a surge of nausea…