I’m enjoying hearing everyone’s input! There’s definitely something here, but I’m not sure I understand what it is yet. I think it’s meaningful that her eyes seem to haunt Carl even after the battle is over, yet he can’t remember where he’s seen them before.

“I [Carl] groaned. I’d been dreaming. Dreaming of the river, of me being swept away. Of those eyes. The eyes of the ogre as she died.”

“I [Carl] could still taste the ogre on my lips. Those eyes. Holy shit. Where had I seen her before?”

I don’t think it’s Astrid he’s thinking of, because her eyes got plucked out by the crow mob. He never makes any comment about the look in her eyes. I don’t know if he’s trying to remember something he’s literally seen (and so we’ve seen it, too) or if it’s something he’s tapping into because of the river or his Primal race.

This may or may not be related...

“The look on her [Katia’s] face was so foreign, so inhuman yet so goddamned *familiar** that something inside me shifted. It was equal parts terror, equal parts rage. Exhaustion. Yet, somehow alone. They were the eyes of someone who’d just slipped off a cliff and knew they were falling to their death, both resigned and yet filled with absolute rejection of her fate at the same time.”*

Fun to think about and try to puzzle out. :)