They found shelter in a half-collapsed warehouse that the defenders had turned into a makeshift strongpoint. Smoke still drifted through the broken roof beams, but the walls held and the fires outside were someone else's problem for the moment.
Vesna leaned against a crate, breathing hard, trying to look steady. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs and stared at the floor like it owed her answers. The image of Reyna's blade flashing toward her kept replaying — not the fear of dying, but the colder fear of being separated. Of Zzyzx being forced to watch her get taken.
She didn't say any of it out loud.
Zzyzx stayed mostly retracted against her skin, but the tendrils were restless. They kept shifting, curling, uncurling, like she was turning the new feeling over and over in her mind. That raw, protective rage from the fight hadn't faded. It sat in her chest like something too big for the space it occupied. She kept examining it from every angle, poking at it, trying to name it and failing.
This feeling… it's not hunger, she whispered inside Vesna's head, voice small and uncertain. It's worse. Or better. I don't know which.
Leshwai wouldn't let either of them drift too far. He pressed himself between them, mossy fluff puffed out, tiny antlers glowing soft and steady. He nuzzled Vesna's side, then reached up to brush against the place where Zzyzx was hidden, then back again — a small, stubborn loop of comfort that said I'm here. You're both here. We're still pack.
None of them spoke for a long time.
Then a shadow moved at the warehouse entrance.
An older woman in scorched caravan leathers stepped into the firelight, the same one Vesna had glimpsed during the street fight. Her sleeve still carried the faded merchant crest. She looked exhausted, one arm bandaged, but her eyes sharpened the moment she saw Vesna.
"You," she said, voice rough from smoke. "That crest on your dagger. I know it."
Vesna straightened slowly.
The woman limped closer, lowering herself onto a crate with a wince. "I traveled with your splinter caravan. After the griffin attack. Not the whole way — I split off further east — but I knew your father. Knew the mark. We shared a fire a few nights. He talked about a daughter he lost."
Vesna's breath caught.
The woman reached into her coat and pulled out a small, worn wooden token — the same crest burned into it, edges blackened but unmistakable.
"They were here," she said quietly. "Two weeks ago. Moved on again when the demons started massing. Heading further east. Said they were looking for safer ground near the old trade spires. They left this behind for anyone who might follow."
She pressed the token into Vesna's hand.
The family thread — the one that had felt so thin and fragile for so long — grew warm again.
Right there in the middle of the burning city.
Right there in the wreckage.
Vesna closed her fingers around the token. She didn't cry. She just held it like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
Zzyzx's tendrils stilled against her skin, the new protective feeling momentarily quieted by the simple weight of hope.
Leshwai chirped once, soft and certain, and pressed himself tighter against both of them.
The siege still raged outside.
But inside the warehouse, for the first time since Glassroot, the trail felt alive again.