I chuckled at his comment, then turned my gaze toward the others. There was something different in their eyes now, a quiet reverence, a kind of respect that hadn't been there before.
I understood it. After everything they'd seen, after the way we had ended this battle, they looked at me differently.
I gave them all a small smile and nodded. It felt earned.
Then I started talking with them, moving from one group to the next. We exchanged stories of the battle—who fought where, what they had seen, how close some of them had come to dying. The mood was calm but heavy. The sense of victory didn't hide the weight we all carried.
Soon, the topic shifted to what the Empire had lost. We had won but at a price. With the Holt Grandmasters gone, the overall power of our world had taken a huge hit.
Everyone knew it. Even here, among the masters who had been freed from imprisonment, I could hear the same concerns echoing in different words.
