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His face is drawn and protected under the harsh brow, the furrowed forehead. No one can see his pain. It’s not theirs to witness. They didn’t cause this. They didn’t lose her.
He kneels in front of the pile of rubble and lumber and body and he doesn’t know if he can tell the difference between any of it anymore. It all melds and melts into one in his blurred vision like the tin she worked so carefully. Her teeny slender hands covered in a layer of magic he could never not marvel over to protect from burns. They still found their way to her skin occasionally. She would dismiss his worry with a smile and the roll of her eyes as she let him bandage the wound, despite how quickly she healed. She has nearly as many scars as he does. Had.
There’s no funerals to hold in a town almost completely void of people. Magnus can’t bear to search through the destruction in an attempt to find pieces of bodies he held whole just the week before.
He waits a few more days until he burns it all. No one tries to stop him.
He has a dream that night. In this dream she’s with him again. They laugh and he cries and she misses him all the same. She says things he would want to hear. It’s not your faults and I love yous and proper farewells. The morning comes and his first waking action is puking onto his sheets. Shaking, he cleans it up.
A few hours later he’s on the road. All of his belongings still left strapped onto his back. Years in the future he’ll forget about most of them. He’ll almost be able to forget the smell of ashes and burnt flesh and the fact that he can’t stomach lavender anymore. An elf and a dwarf become his brothers and they and so many others will bring back the part of him he left behind in Raven’s Roost on this day. But that is his future. And for now, he will mourn.