The fire had burned low by the time anyone spoke again, embers doing more work than actual flame. Kaelid sat propped against his pack, still stiff everywhere Ana's earlier work hadn't quite reached, watching the last of the ogre cores catch the firelight where Tatsuya had laid them out to admire.
Seven of them. Two from the first ogre, two from the second, three from the last — bigger, darker things than the others, cores that had clearly come from something further up the chain than a regular Fractured beast.
Should feel better than this, he thought, turning one over in his mind without bothering to reach for it. Seven cores. Debt's basically handled. So why does it feel like I got the short end of the trade.
Ana hadn't said much since finishing her story — hers, or Aria's, he wasn't sure anymore where one ended and the other picked up. She'd gone quiet in that particular way when doing math nobody else could see, mana reserves probably, how much she had left against how much the night still owed her.
"Kaelid."
He looked up. She hadn't moved from her spot near the fire, but her eyes were on him now, steady in a way that left no space for refusal.
"Come here. Lay down."
He didn't argue — didn't have much left in him to argue with, if he was honest. He dragged himself over, joints protesting every inch of it, and lowered himself down until his head found her lap before either of them really discussed whether that was the plan.
"This okay?" he asked, a beat too late to actually stop it if she'd said no.
"You're already down there." A faint, tired almost-smile. "Stay still."
Her hands found his ribs first, light, testing before they worked. He felt the familiar pull of her magic settle in — not painful, not really pleasant either, just a strange tugging warmth that always made him think of a wound being talked into closing rather than actually stitched.
"You're running low," he said, watching her face rather than the ceiling of stars above them. Even in the dark he could see it — the faint strain at the corners of her eyes, the kind of tired that came from spending something you didn't have much left of.
"I have enough for this."
"That's not what I asked."
She didn't answer right away, focus narrowing somewhere lower on his side, where the darkest bruising had settled deep enough to worry her. "I have enough," she said again, quieter. "Stop talking. You'll waste my concentration and then I'll actually run out."
He let it go, mostly because arguing took energy he didn't have to spare either. The warmth spread another inch, and somewhere in the space between one breath and the next, exhaustion finally won the argument his body had been losing since the ogre's grip closed around him.
He didn't remember drifting off. One moment her hands were still working, the low murmur of her healing settling into his ribs like something half-remembered from childhood — being tucked in, maybe, though it had been years since anyone had — and the next, there was nothing. No dream this time. Just dark, quiet, and the faint, steady pressure of her palm resting against his side long after the healing itself had stopped doing any real work.
Ana kept her hand there anyway.
She told herself it was to monitor him — make sure the worst of the internal bruising didn't creep back the second she looked away. That was true enough. It just wasn't the whole truth, and she knew it, sitting there with the fire dying down and Kaelid's weight solid and real against her legs, breathing slow and even for the first time since she'd pulled his helmet off in the snow.
You scared me today, she thought, watching the firelight catch the sharp lines of his face, softer now than she ever saw them awake. You have no idea how much.
Tatsuya's voice broke the quiet, pitched low so as not to wake him. "How's he doing?"
"Stable," she said, not looking up. "Sleeping properly, not unconscious. There's a difference."
"Didn't say there wasn't." A pause, and when he spoke again there was something almost gentle buried under his usual flat delivery. "You should sleep too, Ana. You gave more than the rest of us today."
"I will." She didn't move. "In a minute."
Tatsuya didn't push it. He settled back against his log instead, sword across his lap, eyes on the treeline rather than the two of them — giving her, without ever saying so, exactly as much privacy as a shared campfire could offer.
The fire popped once, low, and Ana let her eyes drift shut for a moment — not sleep, just a breath. Her reserves felt scraped hollow in a way that went past the usual ache of overusing her magic; today had taken more out of her than any single job since they'd formed the party.
Worth it, she thought, before she could second-guess herself. Every single bit of it.
She looked back down at him. Even asleep, there was a tightness to his brow that never fully let go — some restless thing under the surface that training and sparring and killing monsters hadn't managed to touch yet. She wondered, not for the first time, what exactly he was still running from, out here in the middle of nowhere with a debt to his name and a village he'd walked away from without looking back.
Whatever it is, she thought, brushing a strand of hair back from his forehead without quite deciding to do it first, I hope you find it before it costs you something you can't get back.
Across the fire, Eric shifted in his blankets, still favoring the arm the ogre's club had nearly taken off. Aria sat beside him, not quite touching, close enough that it barely mattered. Neither of them said anything. Exhausted, the whole camp had gone quiet — not peace, exactly, but its closest available substitute.
Ana stayed where she was until her own eyes grew too heavy to fight, Kaelid's steady breathing the last thing she was aware of before sleep finally claimed her too.
Morning came grey and cold, the kind of light that made everything look a little more washed-out than it probably was. Kaelid woke slow, the ache in his ribs announcing itself before anything else did, and it took him a moment to place the weight still settled against him.
Ana hadn't moved. She'd slept sitting up the whole night, it looked like, chin dipped toward her chest, one hand still resting loose where it had been checking his pulse hours ago. Sometime in the dark she'd slumped sideways without waking, her head coming to rest against his shoulder instead.
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He didn't move. At least not right away.
The sun was just starting to clear the treeline, thin and pale, catching the loose strands of her hair that had come free from its usual tie sometime during the fight or the healing or the long walk back to camp — he couldn't say which. She looked younger like this. Not fragile, exactly. Just quiet, in a way she never quite let herself be awake.
She stayed up the whole night... for me.
He thought about waking her. Decided against it, at least for now — she'd earned whatever rest she could still steal before the rest of the camp needed her attention again.
So he sat there instead, watching the light climb, in no particular hurry to be anywhere else.
The camp stayed quiet around them, nobody else stirring yet, just the occasional shift of embers settling in the dead fire and the far-off call of some bird he didn't recognize. For once, his head wasn't racing toward the next job, the next core, the next number he needed to hit. It was just this — her weight against his shoulder, the cold air, the sun doing its slow work on the frost still clinging to the grass.
Could get used to mornings like this, he thought, and didn't examine it any harder than that.
It was Tatsuya who broke it, eventually — not on purpose. He shifted to sheath Moonlight, the soft click of metal against a scabbard carrying further in the quiet morning than he probably intended, and Ana stirred against Kaelid's shoulder a moment later.
She blinked awake slow, confusion flickering across her face for half a second before she registered where she was — and who she'd apparently been using as a pillow. She sat up fast enough that Kaelid felt the loss of warmth before he fully processed she'd moved at all.
"Sorry," she said, voice still rough with sleep, not quite meeting his eyes. "I didn't mean to—"
"I didn't mind." He said it easy, no weight behind it. "You've been awake longer than any of us the past two days. You were allowed to fall asleep."
That seemed to land somewhere. She studied him for a second, like she was checking the sincerity of it, then let out a breath and let her shoulders drop out of whatever brace they'd pulled themselves into.
"How do you feel?" she asked, back to business, fingers already ghosting toward his ribs out of habit more than necessity.
"Sore. Alive. Better than yesterday, which feels like a low bar, but I'll take it."
"It is a low bar." A small, tired smile. "Yesterday you were unconscious in the snow. Today you're complaining about soreness. That's progress."
Across the fire, Tatsuya didn't look up from his sword, though the corner of his mouth had gone distinctly smug. "Sleep well, you two?"
"Shut up, Tatsuya," Kaelid and Ana said, nearly in unison, and something about the timing of it broke the last of the morning's tension into something easier to sit inside.
Aria was next to stir, blinking against the light with the particular grumpiness of someone who hadn't slept nearly deep enough. She took one look at the space between Kaelid and Ana — closer than camp arrangement really required — and one eyebrow went up, though she had the decency not to say anything out loud. Yet.
Eric woke last, groaning through what sounded like every joint in his body protesting at once. "Feels like I got hit by a boulder."
"You got hit by a club the size of a boulder," Tatsuya said, not looking up. "Close enough."
"Fair." Eric sat up gingerly, testing the arm the ogre's throw had nearly taken off. It held, though his wince said it wasn't happy about it. "Are we heading back today?"
"Soon," Ana said, already moving to check the fire was put out, business settling back over her like a coat she'd never really taken off. "Let's get our gear together. Once we're packed up, we can head home."
Nobody argued. They broke camp with the efficient, wordless economy of people who'd done it enough times now to not need instructions — bedrolls rolled, packs shouldered, the fire pit kicked over and buried. Kaelid gathered his own things last, taking a moment longer than necessary to make sure everything was secured before falling in step with the others.
The walk back took the better part of the day, slower than the trip out had been — nobody in much of a hurry to test wounds that weren't fully closed, and less still in any rush to run into something else that wanted to finish what the ogres had started. Avalon's walls came into view a little before sundown, familiar in a way that still caught Kaelid off guard sometimes, this city he'd known for barely three months already feeling more like home than the one he'd grown up in.
They didn't head straight for the guild. By unspoken agreement, the mansion came first — hot food, real beds, and a night without anyone needing to keep half an ear open for something moving in the treeline.
Ana had dinner going within the hour, refusing every offer of help with the same flat look she always gave anyone who suggested she rest instead of cook. Kaelid didn't push it this time. He recognized, better than he had a few months ago, when letting her fuss over something was its own kind of rest for her — a way of putting the night back in order after a day that had nearly gone very badly.
He ended up on kitchen-adjacent duty instead, setting the umbra table while Tatsuya sprawled across a chair cleaning Moonlight with the same reverence he gave everything sword-related; Eric and Aria traded quiet words by the window, still close in that new, careful way neither of them had quite named yet.
Everyone's still here, Kaelid thought, watching them all move around the kitchen like it was the most natural thing in the world. Everyone made it back.
It shouldn't have felt like something worth being grateful for. A few months ago it wouldn't have occurred to him to be. But he'd stood close enough to losing people now — Tatsuya bleeding out against a log, Eric airborne and unmoving in a river, his own consciousness slipping out from under him in the snow — that it didn't feel like a small thing anymore.
Dinner that night was quieter than usual, everyone too worn down for much conversation, but it wasn't a heavy quiet. Just tired, and full, and safe in a way none of them said out loud.
Kaelid caught Ana's eye once across the table, somewhere between the second and third helping, and held it a beat longer than he probably needed to.
She didn't look away first.
The moment stretched longer than either of them probably meant it to, until Aria's voice cut across the table, dry as ever. "You two are being weird again."
Ana broke first, glancing down at her plate with something suspiciously close to a blush. "We're not being weird."
"You're being weird," Tatsuya agreed, not even looking up from Moonlight. "It's fine. Everyone's tired. Nobody's judging."
"I'm judging a little," Eric said, earning a swat from Aria that he took with a grin he clearly thought was worth it.
Kaelid let the ribbing wash over him without much protest, too worn out and, if he was honest, too content to bother defending himself. He caught Ana's eye one more time across the table — a quick, private thing, gone as fast as it came — and went back to his food.
Dinner wound down slow after that, plates emptying, conversation thinning out into the comfortable quiet of people who'd said everything that needed saying for one day. Aria was the first to excuse herself, tugging Eric along by the sleeve toward the stairs with a mumbled excuse about checking his arm again that fooled absolutely nobody. Tatsuya followed not long after, Moonlight cleaned and sheathed, offering nothing more than a short nod on his way out.
That left Kaelid and Ana alone with the dishes and the low burn of the umbra lanterns.
"I'll clean up," he offered, already reaching for the nearest plate.
"You will not." Ana took it out of his hands with a look that dared him to argue. "You almost died two days ago. Sit down."
"No, you sit down. You almost ran yourself dry keeping me alive."
They stared each other down for a second before Ana huffed out something close to a laugh and set the plate back on the table. "Fine. We'll both sit down. The dishes can wait until tomorrow."
Kaelid smiled, easy and real, and pulled a chair out for her without really thinking about it — just something his hands decided to do before his brain caught up. Ana noticed. She didn't say anything about it, but the corner of her mouth curved as she sat.
Outside, Avalon's evening settled in around the mansion, quiet and cold and, for once, entirely safe.