Aya and her party did not move far.
Shin's fever rose with the second nightfall, and Aya ordered the pace broken before exhaustion finished what the injury had started. They made camp in a fold of land where old stone teeth jutted from the earth—ruins half-swallowed by moss and bramble, defensible without being obvious.
Frost Fire vanished at her word. Not all of them. Just enough.
Men who knew how to disappear into roads and taverns, into the spaces where soldiers drank and forgot themselves. Men who understood that wars were not announced first by horns—but by stories.
Aya waited. She sat apart from the fire, cloak drawn close, the hum beneath her skin finally dulling into something bearable. Shin breathed shallowly nearby. Bela did not leave his side.
Seth stood watch, eyes outward, but he did not miss the way Aya's attention never drifted. Not once.
By dawn, Frost Fire returned.
Not together. One by one.
