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Hi, I was wondering what you think of this approach to building up the anticipation and surprise to where the reader would meet the big bad villain in my first novel. Spoiler alert below.

The characters don’t see the villain in the first part of the novel, but they can feel this intense instinctive feeling as if death itself is near. They also get that feeling of hair standing up on the back of the neck as if they are being watched.  They do learn after witnessing the desolation of a kingdom that someone big and bad is behind this but they don’t know who it could to wield an army diverse or big enough to cause genocide.  This feeling will follow through most of the novel as they travel home. Once they get home, the presence disappears for some time. Then one night when all seems well, the presence is back as a nightmarish beast with a horde of bad guys and monsters to finish the job himself that the previous carefully planned attacks of his minions could not.

The heroes do battle and of course, they win but at the cost of loss. They then learn this guy is not the mastermind of the genocide but it’s this bad guy’s boss who still remains unknown. However, they recognize this bad guy was at many other places of atrocities, including the desolation of the kingdom. His existence seems ancient too as he carries a weapon that is only told in stories to scare young soldiers in training. Plus they have never seen or heard of any creature like this first bad guy.

I hope to make this first bad guy’s presence a mystery if something evil is really there watching. However, if the reader pays attention to the clues they might catch on if they put themselves in the character’s position that there is a looming threat. I hope all this makes sense.

Any thoughts or suggestions will be much appreciated.