POV: Lyra
She can't save him. But she'll witness him.
The Moon Goddess's arrival changes the quality of the air.
Not in the way that the moon's absence changed it or the divine fire changed it or the simultaneous god manifestations changed it — in the way that the source of all of those things changes it when the source is present rather than deploying its effects through intermediaries. Colder. Sharper. The specific cold of the lunar domain at its full presence rather than the ambient quality of the lunar channels running through the territory's infrastructure.
Terrible. Beautiful.
I've been applying those two words to things since the beginning of this journey — the King, the bond detonation, the prison's collapse, the divine fire — and I understand now that the combination of terrible and beautiful that I've been reading in all of those things was the partial expression of a quality that has its full source standing in the battlefield in front of me.
