The village that greeted the dawn bore the marks of a battle won, though the victory carried a weight none of them had expected to feel so heavily. Smoke still curled from a few scattered fires the fighting had left burning through the night, and the streets carried the particular hush of a place that had survived something it hadn't fully processed yet.

Three families remained missing — the Millers and Ashfords taken before Jasmine's arrival, along with an elderly couple who had refused to leave their home for the meeting hall, trusting their own aging wards to hold against a threat they hadn't fully understood. Search parties found nothing...