Toviro saw the collapsed house first and stopped.
His mouth opened slightly.
He stood in the street and looked at what had been Elina's home and understood in an instant why she hadn't come back last night, why she had stayed here in the cold and the rain, why the whole night had passed and she hadn't moved.
There was nothing to move toward.
There was only this.
He found her in the wreckage.
Seated on a broken section of wall, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around them, head down and resting on her hands.
Her clothes were soaked through.
Her cheeks were red and her breathing was shallow, the particular shallow breathing of someone whose body has been cold and wet for too many hours.
Toviro crossed the wreckage and dropped to one knee beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Elina."
Nothing.
She didn't lift her head. Her fingers tightened slightly around her knees, which was the only sign that she had heard him.
"Elina, look at me."
Still nothing.
"You're freezing. You can't stay here."
A long silence.
Then she lifted her head slowly and turned it toward him. Her face was flushed and worn, her eyes were red from a night of crying, cold, and no sleep.
She looked at him the way a person looks when they have been somewhere very far inside themselves and coming back takes effort.
"I couldn't find her," she said.
Her voice was barely there. "I looked everywhere. I moved everything I could. I dug for hours."
She looked at the wreckage around them.
"But I couldn't even find her body. I couldn't even… see her one last time."
Her eyes came back to Toviro, something in them asking a question she couldn't form.
"She was my only reason for living."
Toviro didn't fill the silence immediately. He let it be there between them, because some things need a moment of acknowledgment before a response.
Then he said, "That doesn't mean she's gone. And even if she is—what she gave you doesn't end here."
His voice was quiet but it held its ground.
"You're still breathing because of her. You're still here because of her."
He looked at her steadily.
"Don't decide your end in the middle of this. Ozair can help us find her."
Elina looked at him. Something moved in her face, a small shift, like a door opening just slightly where everything had been closed.
He stood. "Don't decide anything yet."
Then he left her there with that and walked back toward Mina's house.
The streets between were the same as they had been. Bodies. Broken stones.
The evidence of something that had passed through and not cared what it left behind.
Toviro walked without looking at any of it, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, keeping his thoughts on the people he had just left and the one he was returning to.
He thought quietly to himself, it is so hard for them. Too heavy for them to carry… but there is no other way.
He looked forward.
He kept walking.
When he arrived at the house he stopped in the doorway.
Mina was on the floor beside Haruto, wrapping him in a white shroud.
Her hands moved slowly and carefully across the cloth, smoothing it, straightening it, giving each fold the attention it deserved.
Tears fell from her eyes onto the fabric as she worked, but she didn't stop to wipe them.
Toviro stepped forward. "Mrs. Mina, what are you—"
She looked at him.
The look was not a request for permission or an explanation. It was simply her, doing the last thing she could still do for her husband.
"This is the last thing I can still give him," she said. Her voice stayed quiet. It didn't break. "I couldn't keep him alive. But I won't leave him like this."
Toviro stopped.
Whatever urgency had been in him when he entered fell away completely.
He stood and looked at her hands moving across the cloth, the care in every motion, and he couldn't speak for a moment because what he was seeing was something he didn't have a word for yet, the particular grace of a person who has lost everything and is still trying to do right by the person they loved.
He stepped closer and lowered himself to one knee beside her.
"Let me be here for this," he said.
She looked at him.
Then she returned to her work and he stayed beside her, and they finished it together in silence.
When they were done Mina sat back, her eyes were closed and her hands were in her lap.
Then a sound came from the doorway.
They both turned.
Ozair stood there. Aryan beside him. Elina just behind.
All three of them looking down, not at anything specific, just down.
The particular posture of people who have come somewhere they needed to come and are not sure how to be here now that they've arrived.
It was silent for a long moment.
Then Mina stood.
She walked to them.
She stopped in front of them and then she opened her arms and pulled all three of them in at once—Aryan in the middle, Elina to his left, Ozair to his right.
She held them.
Ozair's hand came up to his face.
His teeth pressed together, his eyes closed, and he pressed his fingers against his eyes the way people do when they are trying to hold something back that has decided it is done being held.
Aryan stood still and quiet, no sound from him, just the stillness of someone receiving something they didn't know they needed.
Elina felt the warmth of it, her eyes closed and she said, barely a whisper: "Aunty." Not calling out, just saying it because it was the only word that fit.
Toviro stood back and watched.
After a moment a small and quiet thing formed at the corner of his mouth.
Then Mina stepped back and held them at arm's length and looked at each of them.
She said nothing.
She didn't need to.
Ozair was the first to speak.
His voice was slow and rough from everything it had been through. "We are ready for… we are ready for the…" He stopped.
He couldn't finish it.
Aryan looked at him, then at Mina. "We are ready for the funeral," he said.
They had all understood.
The word sat in the room and nobody moved it.
Then Elina stepped forward.
She turned to Ozair and he turned to her.
She looked at him in the eyes and took a breath.
"My house has collapsed entirely," she said. "And my mother is under it."
She paused. She forced herself past the pause.
"I tried everything I could but I couldn't find her. I want your help."
Ozair looked at her for a moment.
Then his mouth set in a line, he turned and walked toward the door. "Let's go."
Aryan was already moving.
Elina stood there for a second watching them, watching the fact that they hadn't hesitated, not even a breath of it, and then she followed.
The wreckage was worse in the morning light.
It spread further than it had looked from a distance, broken sections of wall and roof and floor all layered over each other, rain pooled in the hollows between them.
Ozair called Nyro, he felt it form solid on his arm and stepped into the debris without ceremony.
Aryan positioned himself on the other side.
Elina moved through the middle, her eyes scanning every surface, looking for anything.
Ozair stepped forward and set his focus into the ground.
For a moment, nothing moved. Then the stone answered, a low groan rising as it shifted and began to lift.
Not easily—he could feel the weight of it through his arms and chest, but he kept his face steady and didn't let it show.
He moved the section sideways and dropped it.
He moved to the next.
Aryan worked the water that had pooled through the wreckage, using it to push debris from the edges, clearing the sides while Ozair cleared the center.
They moved around each other without speaking, finding their rhythm, covering ground.
An hour passed. Then two. Then three.
All three of them were breathing harder than they should have been.
The strength behind their abilities was thinning, the effort of maintaining them for this long showing in the way their movements had slowed and the way they breathed between each attempt.
But none of them stopped.
Ozair shifted another section, a large one, the weight fighting him as he forced it upward, and he didn't let go.
He held it, turned it, and set it down on the other side, and then stood with his hands on his knees breathing.
Elina stepped forward through the new gap and pressed her palms down against the wreckage.
The wind surged from the point of contact, moving outward in all directions, sweeping dust and small debris and sodden cloth away from the space.
It cleared a radius around her and then faded.
When the dust settled her eyes found something.
A hand. Just visible at the edge of a large section of wall.
Pale and still, the fingers slightly bent, recognizable in the way that the smallest things are sometimes the most recognizable.
She moved before she processed what she was doing.
She crossed the remaining distance and dropped to her knees beside it and took the hand and pressed it to her face.
"Mom."
The others arrived behind her.
All three of them looked at the hand and the wall above it, then Aryan placed a hand on Elina's shoulder.
She understood.
She stepped back.
Ozair stood before the wall section and looked at it. It was the largest piece in the wreckage.
He could feel its weight before he even moved.
He raised Nyro and drove his will into the ground, pulling at it with everything he had left.
For a moment, nothing answered.
Then the stone shifted. Barely. A deep groan ran through it as it began to lift. His face tightened, color rising and holding there as he forced it higher.
But he didn't let go.
He forced it higher—halfway up. The weight crashed down on his mind like a mountain.
His grip almost loosened. Almost, but he held.
Then wind pressure surged from beneath.
Elina stood there, hands raised, helping him.
The big piece of wall moved up a bit more. But wind alone wasn't enough.
They pushed harder, but it still wasn't enough.
The stone floated a little higher and a little to the side. They were trying to slide it sideways now, but it still wasn't enough to clear the path.
Both Elina and Ozair were in their limit.
That's when Aryan stepped forward.
He breathed—not with his lungs, but with something deeper. From both his hands, water poured out and formed Fang and Rend.
He brought his right foot forward, lowered himself just a bit, breathed once more, and held the twin daggers in front of him.
For a moment, he focused.
Around the blades, water began to spiral—not wild, not scattered, but proper and controlled.
Flowing like the surface of a blade in motion, like water that had been given a single instruction: cut.
Then he moved.
Not fast but in instinct.
He moved forward, and the water surged with him.
A sharp arc cut from the center. Another followed from the opposite side. Then a third from a different angle.
Three lines of pressure, precise and devastating.
The next moment, Aryan was already on the other side of the wall.
The section split—not shattered, not broken apart in chaos, but sliced cleanly into pieces that Ozair and Elina could now move separately.
Ozair and Elina turned those pieces and threw them away.
And there—in the space beneath—was Elina's mother.
She was severely injured.
Elina rushed to her without hesitation.
Not crying yet.
Not yet.
Just there, her hands on her mother's face, saying her name over and over in a voice that had been scraped clean of everything except the one word it needed.