Two figures watched the recovery camp from an eastern ridge where night had reduced every distant person to a moving shadow.
The demon girl sat on a flat stone with both knees against her chest, while her narrow tail wrapped around her ankles.
Her chin rested across folded arms, though tension had remained between her brows since the basin fight ended.
Far below, one fire glowed among treatment blankets and ruined equipment beside the dead worm's broken shell.
"That spike came too close to his heart," she said as Vella crossed between the wounded. "Another inch toward his heart would have ended every part of this assignment."
The boy stood beside her with both arms crossed, offering no answer while wind carried smoke across the ridge.
"If Hajin dies, the Fragment may break with him," she continued as her tail tightened. "Then we answer to the Underworld King without the asset he demanded."
