The ravine's edge held them in its silence for a long while.
Kael remained on his knees, staring across the gap where Perrin's body lay somewhere in the darkness—unreachable, unburied, unavenged.
The bridge that had saved them now hung in shattered pieces, timber and rope dangling like broken bones from the crumbling earth.
Lira's hand never left his shoulder.
"The Leo-kin won't stay stranded forever," Valen said quietly, his voice cutting through the stillness with the precision of someone accustomed to delivering hard truths. "They'll find another crossing. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. But they will come."
Kael didn't respond. His gaze remained fixed on the far side, as though he might want the bridge to reform, Perrin to rise from the dark and stumble back across.
Thran approached slowly, his footsteps heavy with exhaustion and something deeper—the particular weariness of a man who had watched someone young die in his place.
