---
Sekhmet's eyes narrowed slightly as his mind reached backward.
"One and two…" he murmured.
He remembered them… The city guard and Lily's bodyguard.
They had been turned inside the purgatory, in that chaos moment when kobolds attacked and blood decided everything. They had saved him and Lily. They had helped drag the kobolds deeper.
He didn't find them afterward…
Sekhmet's jaw tightened.
"Number one and two," he said quietly, as if speaking to the void itself, "belong to someone whom I lost."
Auri looked at him.
"You cannot find them," she said carefully, not accusing, just stating the obvious.
Sekhmet's eyes sharpened.
"I don't know if I can," he replied. "But they are not dead."
Auri blinked once.
"How do you know," she asked softly.
Sekhmet did not answer directly.
Because the answer was too close to the system. Instead he said the truth in a way that did not expose it.
"If they were dead," Sekhmet said, voice low, "I would feel the loss."
