The camp stayed awake long after the sun disappeared.
Nobody needed Kael to announce what everyone was already thinking. The moment Theron's team confirmed the prisoners existed, the entire operation changed. Soldiers who had spent days searching for traces of missing patrols now had faces to imagine. Some had friends out there. Some had family. Even those who knew none of the prisoners personally understood what it meant.
They were alive.
For now.
Rain sat near one of the campfires with the rest of the squad while the captains met inside the command tent. The fire crackled softly between them, but it did little to warm the mood.
Mordred was the first to break the silence.
"We should've brought them back."
Nobody looked surprised when he said it. Theron had probably expected the complaint before they even returned to camp, and Rain couldn't entirely disagree. Seeing prisoners alive and then walking away from them left a bitter feeling that was hard to ignore.
Elara rested her arms on her knees and looked across the fire. "And if we'd been spotted?"
Mordred shrugged. "We weren't."
"We don't know that."
"We got in and out."
"That's not the point."
Mordred looked ready to argue, but Kai spoke before he could.
"The point is that if we'd gotten trapped in there, the prisoners would've been trapped too."
Mordred's expression tightened. Mostly because Kai wasn't wrong.
Rain stared into the flames, letting the conversation drift around him. The image of the prisoner with the swollen eye kept returning to his mind. More than anything, he remembered the way the man had looked at them. Not hopeful or relieved, just exhausted, as though he wasn't entirely sure what he was seeing was real.
Stephen rubbed the back of his neck. "Anyone else still thinking about that place?"
"Unfortunately," Kai replied.
"It felt weird."
"Everything in the ridge feels weird."
"No, I mean weird weird."
Kai sighed. "That explanation helped nobody."
Stephen pointed at him. "You know exactly what I mean."
To Rain's surprise, Mira nodded. "I do."
Several heads turned toward her. Mira rarely joined conversations unless she felt she had something worth saying.
"The ruins," she said quietly, glancing down at her hands. "They weren't built for demons."
Rain thought back to the stone paths, the broken walls, and the collapsed structures half-buried beneath roots and dirt. Mira was right. The place didn't feel like something demons had created. It felt like somewhere people had once lived.
Lin nodded slowly. "I noticed that too."
After that, the conversation gradually faded. Not because anyone had run out of thoughts, but because everyone seemed lost in them. The crackling fire filled the silence while each of them stared into the darkness beyond the camp, thinking about prisoners, ruins, and whatever waited for them inside the ridge.
Inside the command tent, several maps had been spread across the table, their edges held down by cups, knives, and whatever else happened to be within reach. Kael stood over them while Theron walked the officers through the route they had taken into the ridge.
"The path narrows here," Theron said, pointing to a section of the map. "If we move too many soldiers at once, we'll bottleneck ourselves."
A captain studying the route frowned.
"How many demons are we expecting?"
"We don't know."
The answer drew a wave of unhappy expressions around the table. Kael couldn't blame them. Unknown numbers made planning difficult, and the ridge had offered precious little certainty since they arrived.
Theron moved his finger farther along the route.
"The prisoners are here."
One of the officers leaned forward.
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
The room grew noticeably quieter.
Everyone had already heard the report, but seeing the location marked on a map made it feel more real. The prisoners were no longer an idea or a rumor. They were people in a specific place, waiting for a rescue that now had to happen.
Kael folded his arms.
"How many of them can walk?"
"We couldn't tell."
"And how many will need to be carried?"
Theron shook his head. "Couldn't tell that either."
Several officers exchanged uneasy looks.
One rubbed a hand across his forehead before speaking.
"So we're planning a rescue without knowing how quickly the prisoners can move."
"We're planning a rescue because waiting guarantees nothing," Kael replied before the discussion could drift into circles.
The room settled again. There were still gaps in what they knew. Too many of them. But no amount of discussion was going to fill those gaps before morning. Kael looked around the table.
"We move at first light."
Nobody argued. The decision had effectively been made the moment Theron's team confirmed the prisoners were alive. This meeting had never been about whether they would attempt the rescue.
Doctor Hale found herself back inside Taren's tent before midnight.
Part of her was annoyed by that. The other part had stopped pretending she wasn't curious.
Taren was sitting up this time, though only enough to drink from a cup resting beside his bedroll.
"You should be sleeping."
Taren glanced up at her. "So I've been told. More than once. At least."
Hale shook her head.
"Maybe there's a reason for that."
"Maybe."
The answer was just dry enough to make her roll her eyes.
Hale moved closer and checked the bandages. The wounds looked clean—too clean.
Healing wasn't unusual. Resonance could do remarkable things, and she'd seen people recover from injuries that should have left them bedridden for weeks. Still, something about Taren's recovery bothered her.
Every time she left the tent, she found herself thinking about it again.
"You've been staring at those wounds for a while."
Hale looked up. "I'm a doctor. Looking at wounds is kind of my job."
Taren let out a quiet chuckle. The sound almost surprised her.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"The wounds?"
"No the rescue."
Hale paused.
"The captains haven't announced details, but they're going."
Taren lowered his gaze to the cup in his hands.
"They don't have much time," Taren said quietly. "If the demons decide to move them deeper into the ridge, finding them again could become impossible. Every day they stay there makes the rescue harder."
The words sounded genuine. That was what unsettled her most.
Nothing about his tone felt forced or rehearsed. Every answer came naturally, without hesitation.
Nothing felt wrong, and yet the feeling remained—a small, persistent irritation at the back of her mind, like a splinter she couldn't find.
Outside the tent, voices drifted through the camp. Soldiers preparing for tomorrow. Sharpening weapons, checking supplies, making ready for whatever waited in the ridge.
Taren listened to the sounds for a moment, just long enough for Hale to notice. Then he looked away again.
By morning, the camp was already moving.
Soldiers crossed between tents carrying supplies and equipment while runners carried messages from one side of the operation to the other. The atmosphere felt different from the day before. Less uncertainty. More purpose.
Rain found the squad near the edge of camp where Theron was already waiting.
A rough sketch of the route had been copied from Kai's slate and spread across a crate between them.
Theron pointed toward the route.
"We move in three groups."
Immediately, everyone paid attention.
"The first group enters the ruins and secures the prisoners."
He pointed toward another section.
"The second group covers the route back."
Then another.
"The third remains near the extraction point."
Stephen looked at the map.
"So we're the first group."
Theron nodded.
Mordred grinned. "Finally. We got a fun job."
"Once the prisoners are free, everything changes," Theron said, tapping the route with his finger. "From that moment on, this becomes the priority."
The path home would become the most important part of the mission the moment the prisoners were freed.
Rain understood immediately. Finding the prisoners had been difficult enough, but getting them out safely would be far worse, especially if the demons realized what was happening. There were too many unknowns, too many things that could go wrong once they started moving dozens of exhausted captives through hostile territory.
Theron looked around the group.
"Questions?"
Nobody spoke. It wasn't because they understood every detail of the plan. There were still gaps that couldn't be filled until they were inside the ridge. But they understood the objective, and for now, that was enough.
Theron nodded once. "Good."
Then he looked toward the distant tree line where the ridge waited beyond the camp.
"We move in one hour."
For a moment, nobody said anything as Rain found himself looking in the same direction, toward the ruins, toward the prisoners, toward the mission that had stopped being a possibility and become reality. By this time tomorrow, they would either be bringing people home—or explaining why they couldn't.