Sylvia looked at the fragments on the ground for a moment.
Just a moment. Then she exhaled, the way she did when something had wasted her time and she was choosing not to make it a bigger thing than it was.
"Complete waste," she said quietly, shaking her head once. "Time, effort, the whole thing." She turned away from the broken pieces. "Come on. We find another pair."
Lucas didn't argue. He adjusted his grip on the hemisphere, keeping his mana steady around it, and followed her deeper into the trees.
The forest got quieter as they moved. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, the kind that meant things were happening just far enough away that you couldn't hear them yet.
They found another pair before long.
