When her spirit passed through Ellanher's keeping, the god had been tempted like never before to interfere with a mortal's choice. Between proceeding to his father's realm to be renewed and returning to the earth, Herleva had chosen the latter—she had done all that there was there for her to do and bore no more poison in her spirit. She had attained peace.
To Ellanher, her loss had the opposite effect. Far from the pendulum becoming still, its swinging became a spiral. What he failed to achieve by way of careful balance, he thereafter sought by a mercurial drumbeat: now of light and order, now of darkness and chaos.
With nothing but the might of a grieving god, he conquered lands and subdued communities, and he imposed his own nature upon them—a methodical disorder, a vulnerable strength
