As the evening began to settle into twilight, the path leveled off and ran across a more gentle slope of land. The air was thin and chill now, and the tops of the peaks looked more like towers than mountain crags. The company halted suddenly and sat looking at the what could only be a ruined castle laying directly in the path ahead of them. The walls had fallen in and lay in heaps of rubble, the one remaining tower jutted up out of the middle of the ruin, gesturing impolitely at the sky. Black vines covered with pure white flowers twined over the wreckage, a foul scent rising from them into the air. Dale closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, shaking it. "Why do I get the feeling, " he thought, looking back at the ruins, "that I have just made the worst mistake of my life?" Book three of the Sojurn Chronicles continues the adventure of a small band of heroes as they journey to distant lands in a desperate race to save the world from almost certain doom. The series has been lauded as one of the most captivating epic adventures of all time.