The mountain burned until nightfall.
Even after the largest flames were finally buried beneath snow and dirt, smoke still rose from the ruins in long black spirals against the freezing sky.
The camp no longer looked like a refuge.
It looked like a graveyard.
Collapsed tents littered the ridge like broken skeletons. Burned supply crates smoldered beneath layers of ash while injured refugees sat wrapped in blankets near the surviving eastern shelters, faces hollow with exhaustion and shock.
Children cried quietly into their mothers' shoulders.
Some people simply stared at the destruction without speaking at all.
Because there were no words large enough for this kind of loss.
And at the center of it—
covered carefully beneath a clean white cloth
lay Aldric.
No one had moved him yet.
No one could.
Jones sat beside the body in the snow with blood still smeared across his hands and sleeves, staring blankly at the burned fabric covering Aldric's chest.
