The next morning, Meg wakes an hour before her alarm. She remembers all of the strange events of the previous day, so she dresses and walks to the pasture. Meg finds Proginoskes where she left him, so she knows everything that happened yesterday was real. Meg and Proginoskes discuss what their first trial might be. She tells the cherubim about what happened with Mr. Jenkins the previous night. Proginoskes says what she’s describing sounds like Echthroi and must mean they need to find Mr. Jenkins as part of their first trial. Meg asks what an Echthros is, so Proginoskes warps Meg through his eye to a bare mountaintop. Meg hears a deafening sound as she stands there and sees a crack of nothingness in the sky where stars were previously. She realizes this is what her father is working on in Brookhaven. Proginoskes explains that the Echthroi have Xed—or extinguished—those stars.

Proginoskes then transports Meg to a previous conversation between her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Murry talk about Earth’s increased violence and how the events in the other galaxies are starting to happen in theirs. Mr. Murry then connects Mrs.