The search parties found the first survivors within hours — the Millers, disoriented and weak but unmistakably alive, discovered wandering the tree line nearly two miles from Ashmere with no memory of the time between the Hollowing's attack and their sudden, confused return to themselves. Word of their discovery spread through the camp faster than any messenger could carry it, exhausted fighters weeping openly at news they'd barely dared hope for.

"I remember cold," the eldest Miller daughter told Jasmine, when the strike force finally reunited with the girl and her family at a hastily established camp near the shrine's now-ordinary clearing. "And then nothing. And then I was just......