“He was not what Falani expected. She had imagined a monster — something with horns and fangs and skin the colour of death. Instead, she saw a man. Tall, lean, draped in robes that were black not because they were dyed but because they seemed to absorb the light around them. His face was ageless — not young, not old, but suspended in a state that suggested time had simply given up trying to mark him. His eyes were the only inhuman thing: dark pits that reflected no light, that seemed to open into a void rather than look out from one.”