For a long time you just watch the fires of Hetch, but there is nothing you can do. Everyone alive has already fled, and you don't think many people fled. Ash drifts slowly through the forest.

Somehow you cannot look away from the burning buildings, though the ash stings your eyes and the bitterly cold air freezes your feet. You just sit there, watching your home disintegrate, tears streaming down your face until your wipe them away with your mantle.

"We need to go," Melaxu says. "Come. I have supplies at home." She heads deeper into the woods, leaning heavily on her spear. You rise on shaking legs and follow. Your wounds ache, but if anyone can heal you, a philosopher can. You grit your teeth and put one bare, bloody foot in front of the other. You stumble into deep woods, following the muddy brown shape of the nymph and hoping that the rising sun will warm you.

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It does not, but it illuminates a grove you never noticed before, a clearing overgrown with moss despite the earliness of the season. A domed marble temple in the old Mytelean style, abandoned and then forgotten for centuries, stands here like an invader. You have never seen Sea Kingdom architecture, and your mother's descriptions did not prepare you. Only the pall of smoke from Hetch's continued burning dampens your amazement.