The world is a clock winding down.

Soon I will fall asleep and I will wake from this terrible dream. The endless night will fall, and I will rise. I long for that night. I do not fear it. I have had my fill of fear. I have stared too long into the abyss, and now the abyss stares back at me.

Prayers and promises. The one his sister made to him. The unspoken one I made to my sister. Prayers are promises, too, and these are the days of broken promises.

If I had faced it then, I wouldn't be facing it now, but sooner or later you have to choose between running and facing the thing you thought you could not face.

I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

Adolphus is not at his desk. That means he is somewhere in the Monstrumarium, has gone home for the day, or is dead.

The kid who didn't go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn't. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over - not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart. Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.