He felt them early this time.
Not by much, maybe thirty seconds of warning where before he had ten, but the difference between thirty seconds and ten was the difference between choosing your ground and being handed by someone else.
His Divine Sense caught the signatures at the edge of its range, five of them moving through the tree line on the right side of the road with the same deliberate spacing as the valley ambush. Waiting for the road to narrow before they committed.
Better equipped than the last group. He could feel it even at distance, the divine radiance on each of them was cleaner, more concentrated, the kind that came from fresher commissions and higher-grade blessings rather than field-standard issue.
Heaven was calibrating upward.
"Five," he said quietly. "Right side. Thirty seconds."
Valeria didn't look at the tree line. "I know."
Seraphine's hand moved toward her core instinctively, then stopped. He caught it in his peripheral vision and said nothing.
