(Xyrion POV)

  By first light, the camp reorganized itself around Professor Hale without pause.

  Alchemy tents replaced triage. Instruments came out where stretchers had been an hour earlier. Orders shortened. Voices dropped. The work didn’t stop. It changed hands.

  Eight dead.

  Two more unconscious. One lifeward rotated out with mana collapse. The rest walking wounded and holding because there was no alternative.

  Lysara was transferred fully to the alchemy team.

  No discussion. No resistance.

  She crossed the camp once, lifeward satchel surrendered for a case of tools, posture unchanged. She did not look back toward X-17.

  By midmorning, Xyrion widened the perimeter. Nets replaced blades. Air wards were thinned, not dropped. All five expedition teams were all together now.

  Birds were taken alive. Small animals driven, cornered, contained. Anything that moved wrong was secured and logged.

  None of it was clean.

  All of it was necessary.

  When the worst of the work slowed, Xyrion led them past the edge of the command space, past the runners and the ward-lights, to where the camp thinned into rock and shadow. Only then did he stop.

  Kayden stood beside him, jaw tight.

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  They didn’t speak until the noise of the tents fell away.

  “She left the line,” Xyrion said. “Four hours unaccounted for. No authorization. No signal.”

  Kayden waited.

  “She brewed. In the field. Converted herself from lifeward to alchemist without clearance.”

  Still nothing.

  “That was not a decision for her to make.” Xyrion said.

  Kayden inclined his head a fraction. Acknowledgment.

  Xyrion exhaled slowly. “Shea explains the movement.”

  Kayden looked at him.

  “Damn it.” Frustration slipped past Xyrion’s ice-cold restraint. “I have never seen something like this graveyard.”

  “Bodies forming where they shouldn’t. Death not clearing.”

  Xyrion dragged a hand down his face and let it fall. “That’s a separate problem. And it’s larger.”

  Silence stretched.

  Kayden shifted beside him, breath catching before he smoothed it out. He rolled his shoulder and hissed under it.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Later,” Kayden replied. “It holds.”

  “Everything holds until it doesn’t.”

  Kayden gave a short, humorless breath. “You want the list now or after we’re done pretending we’re fine?”

  Xyrion looked at him then. Really looked. “Sit.”

  Kayden hesitated—then lowered himself against the rock, careful, jaw tight. “You’re not better off than I am.”

  “I didn’t say I was.”

  The ground tilted when Xyrion sat. He waited for it to settle. It didn’t, not fully.

  “She shouldn’t have been gone off alone,” he said. The edge in his voice surprised him.

  Silence stretched.

  The unit had changed.

  The mission had changed.

  Xyrion looked back toward the lights of the camp, jaw tight. “When we’re back,” he said, voice low, “you’re briefing me on everything you didn’t say.”

  Kayden hesitated. Just a beat too long. “Afterward,” he said. “A drink.”

  Xyrion turned away. His hand closed once at his side, then loosened. “We’ll see.”

  Kayden didn’t push it. He only nodded, shoulders settling as if the weight hadn’t lifted—just shifted.

  “Go see the healers and then get some rest. We’re not returning to the academy just yet.”