By Grace

As was his custom, Orthael watched the life of Trien go about before him while he thought about Malika's questions. The baker haggled with a farmer for a box of vegetables, a thatcher pushed a cart of straw and ladders past them, and at the edge of his view he thought he saw a slightly red-faced Herrin holding the hand of a young lad.

It was ordinary and precious. Worldly and divine - so far from what had happened last night.

"Malylech is known in various apocryphal texts to be a powerful foe, but your weapon ought to have harmed it and Varreniel ought to have banished it."

He fell silent while Judgement whispered further. The baker shook hands with the farmer and took the vegetables; the sound of hammering started in the distance.

"The Greater Dead do not belong in this world: their grip on it is tenuous. Yet, didst thou feel that it was somehow more... grounded than it ought to have been?"