Half an hour had passed since the battle ended, and the bloodstains on the snow had long been buried by the wind and snow.
Skala sat cross-legged by the bonfire, his gaze solemn.
Before him lay a row of beast bones inscribed with names.
Exactly five of them.
Five team members had lost their lives in the chaos.
He couldn't think of anything he could have done better, yet casualties still occurred.
Shadow Wing and the other two Proto-Dragons had flown out to stand guard, and before he left, he had blessed the surviving trolls with divine magic to prevent the nightmare from resurfacing.
"Twenty-three people," Siye whispered, kneeling beside him, "still alive."
"All wounded," Gollon interjected from the side, "but they can all move, just very tired."
"Including Toka?"
Siye glanced not far away—
Toka was kneeling by a rock, his divine emblem hanging steadily on his chest, eyes tightly closed, as if praying or having fallen into a deep sleep.
His wounds had been bandaged, but the scars on his soul and mind would take much longer to heal.
"He's asleep," Siye said softly, "He's just... too tired."
The firelight flickered, reflecting on every silent face.
Skala unclasped his divine emblem from his chest and held it in his palm.
It had returned to its normal temperature, no longer hot, no longer burning.
But he knew the deity was still watching him.
For some reason, Gulen's previous words suddenly surfaced in Skala's mind.
"Are you ready to become a footnote in someone else's miracle?"
Indeed, a miracle had descended today, and some had become footnotes.
Skala gazed at the flickering flames, his knuckles unconsciously rubbing the cold surface of the divine emblem.
Gulen's words were like a thorn, always stuck deep in Skala's heart.
"Without a new deity, would tragedy not occur?" He scoffed inwardly.
Memories surged like a tide.
Along this journey, there were old people who starved to death in tents, children who gnawed on tree bark, and civilians massacred by the Frost Howl tribe.
At that time, there was no new deity, only the silent loa and the cold snowfield.
"Gulen was wrong." Skala gripped the divine emblem tightly. "We were already footnotes—the most insignificant punctuation mark in loa's story."
The bonfire crackled, spitting out a shower of sparks.
Skala looked up and surveyed the surviving team members, their fatigue and fear so familiar on their faces.
Once upon a time, Tok-Aak's longhouse was also filled with such faces.
"We are not sacrifices of a miracle," he said to Gulen in his heart, "We are witnesses who survived through the miracle."
"What do we do next?" Siye suddenly nudged his arm.
Skala was silent for a moment, then tightened his grip on the divine emblem, his gaze fixed on the distant north.
"Rest first, then we'll have a meeting."
The next day, at dawn.
A cold wind swept through the camp; a faint residual warmth lingered at the bottom of last night's bonfires.
Skala stood on a towering rock, clad in a worn cloak, his left arm simply bound with a cloth strip.
He gazed at the survivors neatly lined up before him.
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