The screaming had stopped at last. The Land Before the Forest was nothing but a black skeleton of charred, wooden bones still smoking in the pre-dawn half light.

You took my husband. You took my soul. You took my innocence. Now, you will take nothing from anyone ever again.

I sat down, suddenly exhausted.

Something was underneath my leg.

I laughed. As if fortune had not mocked me enough.

I picked up the age-old book. Inside it were scribbled annotations in the same anguished, desperate hadwriting that had adorned the crumbling wall. I thought of the man Lorelei had found so amusing.

Was this what he’d read as he waited for the allium to take effect? Did it answer all of his questions?

I sat and read and waited, breathing in the smell of the autumn trees. I asked forgiveness for all I had done, and all I had been made to do. I wondered what lay in store for one such as me. The sun was rising, and I welcomed the nascent flames as they gently embraced me.

I smiled.

The dawn truly was… spectacular.