Alex looked down at the city.
The battle was finished, the streets running with the blood of Devourer Beasts and humans alike, the smell of fear and sorrow and chaos hanging thick over everything, refusing to lift even as the battle came to an end.
A million eyes looked up at him.
He saw them all. The ones carrying hope and something close to gratitude, the understanding that without his arrival, they would not be standing to feel anything at all.
And the ones carrying anger and hatred, equally valid, the eyes of people who had watched someone they loved fall in the time when he could have acted and refused.
Both were honest, but the emotion that drowned every other was fear.
Fear of the next battle. Fear of retaliation. Fear of the war that had not ended but only changed shape.
