They held the clearing until dawn.

  One dead.

  Three injured.

  One critical.

  The body was wrapped without ceremony.

  Xyrion’s voice never rose. Orders moved through the remaining ranks clean and cold, each one placed exactly where it belonged. Vern spoke little. When he did, it was to confirm, not to correct.

  By the time they reached the southern town, the sky was already brightening.

  The critically injured were taken straight to the healer’s hall. The rest were dismissed into enforced stillness—no training, no patrols, no movement beyond assigned quarters. Recovery orders. Observation.

  Lysara scrubbed blood from her sleeves that wasn’t hers.

  The summons came after midday.

  Lysara reached the corridor outside the command room as voices carried through the stone.

  She slowed.

  “…she left formation,” Xyrion was saying. His voice was controlled, but tighter than she’d ever heard it. “No notice. No signal. She vanished.”

  “And returned,” Vern replied. “With a warning.”

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  “Thirty minutes unaccounted for. That’s absence, and she is not a scout.”

  A pause settled, deliberate.

  “She caught the pairs before our outer scouts,” Vern said. “One minute earlier than the attack.”

  Vern exhaled once.

  “It’s also why you’re standing here with one dead instead of more,” he said.

  Another pause.

  “She remains on your team,” Vern said. Final.

  “With restrictions,” Vern added. “Before you say it.”

  A beat.

  “Yes.”

  The corridor shifted as Lysara stepped forward.

  The door opened, and she stepped in.

  “You do not leave my sight again without clearance,” Xyrion started.

  “You operate on instinct,” Vern continued. “That’s dangerous in a unit.”

  Another pause.

  Vern did not raise his voice.

  He didn’t sit, either. He remained standing beside the desk, one hand resting on the edge as if the matter required no deliberation.

  “Your deviation is recorded,” he said. “So is the outcome.”

  Lysara stood where she’d been told. Hands at her sides. Eyes forward.

  “One fatality,” Vern continued. “Three injured. One critical. That number matters.”

  He let the silence do the rest.

  “Because of that,” he said, “your discipline will be light.”

  A pause. Then—

  “You will be assigned after-action sanitation duty.”

  Lysara’s gaze flickered despite herself.

  “You will assist in the cleanup of all live-training grounds used during the engagement,” he said. “Blood, residue, damaged wards, remains. Manual work only. No spellwork. Supervised.”

  Her throat tightened. She swallowed.

  “The fact that there was only one body was noted,” Vern said calmly. “And Lysara, we would be having a different conversation had you disappeared for any other reason than scouting.”

  He met her eyes then—not harsh, not kind.

  “Dismissed.”

  Her hands didn’t stop shaking until hours later.

  She walked back to the west quarters with the sense of invisible boundaries closing around her.