POV: Mara
Ash sticks to my boots as I walk the broken streets. It cakes in the seams, clings to the laces. The city smells of wet stone, burned rope, and the strange hollow quiet left behind after screaming stops.
“Count everyone,” Cael says beside me, voice low and rough with too many orders and not enough sleep. “Living, injured, missing. No exceptions.”
“No exceptions,” I echo, because the words need to be said twice to feel real.
We pass collapsed stalls that used to sell oranges and rope and folded fortunes. The bright awnings are nothing but scorched tatters now. Shattered glass crunches under our boots. Burned banners droop from cracked beams—Lysanth’s colors smeared and half burned away like the city tried to peel its own skin off.
People approach us slowly—bandaged, limping, leaning on each other like makeshift crutches. Some cry when we write their names down. Some stay silent.
Children cling to their mothers’ skirts, eyes too big for their faces. Fathers look older than they did last week. Women with ash-gray braids clutch buckets of rainwater like it’s gold instead of sky.
“Cael!” a man calls from a doorway, voice hoarse, throat wrapped in a dirty bandage. “Is it over?”
“For now,” Cael answers. He doesn’t raise his voice; he doesn’t need to. People lean toward it anyway. “We rebuild. Together.”
The word together stretches over the street like a net. Some people relax into it. Some don’t. I write the man’s name—Garan, fishmonger, wife and son accounted for—and feel the weight of three small lives sit on a single uneven line of charcoal.
We turn a corner and my feet stop on their own. An old Drift body lies half-buried in rubble near the end of the lane. A man. Maybe twenty. Maybe less.
A woman behind me whispers sharply, “Leave him. He was enemy.”
I look up slowly, my own anger surprising me with how clean it feels. “He was a son,” I say. “To someone.”
Her face softens as if she didn’t expect to be corrected. Cael steps up beside me, silent support, presence like a wall that decided to be on my side today.
I lift the Drift’s broken hand and straighten his fingers. They’re still warm in places where the sun hit. My throat tightens.
“They all get rites,” I say, voice tight. “Even them. Especially them. Or we turn into the thing we just fought.”
The woman bows her head, shame flushing her cheeks. “Forgive me,” she murmurs.
“Forgive yourself,” I say, softer. “We’re all tired.”
Cael’s eyes warm with quiet pride. It hums in the bond too, a low approving note that makes my ribs ache. “You lead by example,” he whispers, just for me.
I swallow hard and stare at the name I’ve just written—unknown Drift, marked with a small cross because I refuse to let him vanish. “Someone has to,” I say.
We walk the riverside next. The water runs high and ugly, full of burnt wood and half-drowned banners. The stones here are slick with soot and moss. People have already started clearing debris in small, stubborn piles.
A boy waves us down, hair sticking up in ash-stiff spikes. “Miss—sir—my father—my father can’t stand.”
We follow him to a collapsed doorway where a wounded man lies, legs crushed beneath a fallen beam. His breaths come in short, shallow bursts. Splinters stick out of his trousers like teeth.
“Don’t move,” I tell him, dropping to my knees. “Please. You’ll make it worse.”
He laughs once, hysterical. “Worse than this?”
“Yes,” I say, and my own steadiness surprises me. “Trust me. I know worse.”
Cael kneels opposite me. We slide our hands under the beam. My muscles scream, my burned palms flare, my spine protests, but I push harder. Ash showers down. The man groans. The boy whimpers, fists pressed to his mouth.
“One, two, lift,” Cael grits out.
We heave. The beam rises just enough for Lorre and another Shield to drag the man free. My arms shake so hard afterward I nearly drop the ledger. Cael’s breath saws in his chest, but he doesn’t let it show on his face.
The man sobs in relief, clutching his son’s sleeve. “I thought—”
“We don’t leave our own,” Cael says.
“Or theirs,” I add, nodding toward the Drift boy’s body still waiting for a proper sheet down the street.
The man’s eyes shine. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Regents.”
We move on. Street to street. Rooftop to ruined cellar. We count 213 living in this district. 41 injured. 9 missing. Nine names circled in charcoal that smears under my thumb when I trace them. Nine unknowns hanging in the air like unasked questions.
I write the numbers down with a hand that doesn’t want to stop shaking.
Cael touches the back of my wrist, grounding me like always. His fingers are rough, warm, careful.
“You’re doing well,” he murmurs.
“No,” I whisper, eyes stinging. “I’m just doing.”
He squeezes gently. The bond hums—agreement, admiration, a soft ache. “That’s what leadership is,” he says. “Doing. Even when it hurts. Especially then.”
I want to argue. I don’t. I’m too tired.
Before I can answer, a runner sprints toward us, mud splashing up his shins, chest rising and falling too fast. His hair sticks out in terrified spikes; his eyes look like they’ve outrun the rest of him.
“Regents!” he gasps, nearly tripping on a broken stone. “A message—from the Outer Isles—urgent!”
The word urgent hits the street like fresh thunder.
Cael takes the scroll with hands that have held too many blades this week. I watch the color drain from his face as he reads, slow at first, then faster, jaw tight.
“What?” I breathe. The bond tightens, waiting with me.
He hands it to me. The script is jagged from haste, ink blotched by salt or sweat:
“Lysanth, hear us. The Isles request alliance. Our enemies move. Choose quickly.”
The words pulse on the page like distant drums we can’t quite hear yet—but know are marching anyway.
Another war. Another threat. Another weight on shoulders already bent.
Cael meets my eyes. His are tired and furious and stubbornly alive.
“It never ends, does it?” he says, voice soft enough that only I hear. Not a complaint. A truth.