This is an entirely new magic.
He has altered many things in the time that has passed since the Alliance.
He has altered the landscape, the shadows, the darkness itself. He has altered himself, even.

But he has never altered another in such a deeply irreversible way. And yet, here stands Balto, old friend. Here stands Balto, changed entirely. There is nothing at all left of the blue stallion he had met as a weak, crippled child. The strange, cave dwelling stallion who had sworn he belonged to him. The stallion who had lied to him. No, this is something else entirely.

Oh! How perverse the sideways beating of the heart in the cage of his chest as the true scope of his power seizes him. Beyza had told him that there was nothing he could not do, he need just think it. And here is the proof, Balto stood before him something entirely different. What a spectacularly beautiful thing he is.

The eyes open and find him. There are no pupils, only a deep blackness, but Jamie knows. He knows that the darkness is looking at him. They are the darkness together, the two of them. He smiles, Jamie, that ink-black mouth, that shark-tooth smile. 

There is no anguish in that voice now. No, no. There is nothing at all left of that old blue stallion. “Yes, Balto,” he says but does not reach for him again. “You are magnificent.”