The grey light of dawn was beginning to filter through the smoke that still hung over the village. The fires had been extinguished, the wounded tended, and the dead laid out in the church for the rites that would come later. I moved among the survivors, my hands still faintly glowing, my steps slow, my breath shallow. There was nothing left of the ember that had blazed in the square, nothing but a flicker, a memory, a warmth that would not quite fade.
Runa followed me, as she had through the long hours of the battle, through the desperate ride to the village, through the aftermath that had no end. She did not speak, did not offer comfort or advice. She simply watched, and in her watching, I saw something I had never seen before.
Awe.
