Wick is a brownie, one of the Small Folk, the Muses who kindle mortal art and wonder and the small enchantments that make a life more than survival. He is prickly, proud, and secretly the kindest thing in the whole story.
A Muse no one hears
The Small Folk are the barometer of the age, and the age is late. As the light dies the Muses fall silent, one by one, and Wick can feel his own kind going quiet around him. He is a spark in a world that is forgetting how to catch.
Fading, and kindling anyway
He is fading with the world, and he knows it, and he keeps kindling wonder anyway. In a saga full of gods who withdrew and heroes who cannot act, the smallest character is the one who simply keeps doing his job as the lights go out.
The heart of the age
Wick is the reader's heart in the mosaic, the true measure of what is being lost. When the little folk go quiet, the age has deepened past argument. Whether Wick keeps his fire is, in the end, the question of whether the world is still worth saving.