In grief we return to Darius’ telling and memories of Rowanna. His promise to be a good brother, now broken. And the machinations of his mother are revealed as Calisandra’s ghost leads him to their graves. It’s a fascinating lead-in to the nature of Darius’ transformations and proper introduction to Magnus Dux Malphas. With that Winter is another issue that bursts into spectacular colour as Darius leaps to protect his beloved Seraphina.

I feel I should like this issue more than I do. It’s found its balance between emotion and reveals. The battle is epic and full of such loss. It’s a feast for the eye without compromising on the brutality inflicted by a demon such as Malphas. However I did find it disappointing that the [] woman was tortured and murdered and we have a character of colour introduced just to exposit the exact same information and then be punted from the narrative. Personally I prefer not to have tokenised characters.

At this point I would also have liked to have seen more of Darius and Seraphina’s relationship. It’s the central force of the comic and Darius spends so much time pushing her away. While I enjoyed last issue it still doesn’t quite make me understand who they are to each other besides a prophesied doom and the moon maiden. They love each other, certainly. We’ve seen them be punished by her father who disapproves of their relationship. We’ve seen them tested by the horrors. We haven’t really seen them except in the very beginning when Darius arrives and is asked to retell their story to Seraphina and in a handful of panels here. But that’s reminiscing.