Arvella stood in the middle of the burning supply compound with her bare feet on the scorched earth and her eyes blazing violet and the crescent moon behind her ear burning with a light so intense it cast its own shadows — silver against the orange of the fire, celestial against the mundane, the light of the Goddess cutting through the darkness that the shadow creatures brought with them.
She was changed.
Levi saw it immediately — the difference between the Arvella who had descended into the earth for the Trial of Sacrifice and the Arvella who had climbed back out. It wasn't physical — she looked the same, the same dark hair, the same cotton gown with its living green threads and moss hem, the same barefoot stance that made her look like something the forest had grown rather than somethi
