No one slept the first night after victory.
They lay down, some of them. They closed their eyes. They even dreamed, if pain, smoke, and the memory of screaming sky could be called dreams.
But no one in Aru Temb truly slept.
The city had learned too much in one night to trust silence.
Along the lower terraces, families kept lamps burning until dawn. Mothers washed soot from children who had never gone near the battle. Old men sat outside doorways with spears across their knees they could no longer lift well enough to matter. The fishers did not untie their boats. Even the dogs barked at the river as though the dark water might rise again if no one insulted it first.
Above them all, the palace remained awake.
The wounded filled the shrine halls, the barrack courts, the grain lofts cleared in haste, and every covered chamber where mats could be laid and water carried. Priests of Ru moved among them with oil and witness-prayers. River-keepers of Lapi brought black jars of sacred water, washing blood from faces that might never wake again.
In the lower royal court, the dead were being counted.
Again.
Then again.
As if the number might change if grief and discipline argued long enough.
Eren stood in the middle of it, half wrapped in fresh bandages, armor stripped away, dark robe thrown over wounds that still bled through the cloth in places. He looked less like a prince than like war that had learned how to walk indoors.
A healer caught him by the wrist as he passed.
"You tear that side open again," she said, "and I will bind you to a bed with public help."
Eren pulled his wrist free.
"If I tear it open again, bind me after the count."
She stared at him.
"Do men of your line ever listen?"
"Only to alarming things."
"I am alarming."
"Not enough."
He moved on before she could invent a sharper threat.
At the end of the long counting table, Captain Letho stood with one arm in a sling, reading names off bark-strips while a scribe scratched marks beside the dead, the living, the missing, and the ones who could not be named until morning light helped identify what battle had undone.
"River stair, second ring," Letho said. "Five dead. Two missing. One body unrecoverable."
The scribe asked quietly, "Name for the unrecoverable?"
Letho's jaw tightened.
"Still spoken," he said. "Write it."
That was the rule now.
Still spoken.
Even if nothing whole remained.
Eren came to the table and put both hands on the wood. For a moment, he looked down at the lists without reading them, as though the mere shape of names could injure a man after enough hours awake.
"How many fit to fight by sunrise?" he asked.
Letho did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
"Twenty-three," he said at last. "If your definition of fit is ungenerous."
"And by honest definition?"
Letho looked up.
"Nine."
Eren exhaled once through his nose.
Before he could speak, a palace runner entered at speed, mud still on his calves.
"My lord—"
"Speak."
"The old king asks for the lower terrace to be sealed before dawn. No priest, keeper, or councilor enters without written authority."
Eren nodded once. "Good."
The runner hesitated.
"And the woman from the sky?"
The room changed around that question.
Even the wounded nearby seemed to listen differently.
Eren looked at the boy.
"She is under crown protection."
"Yes, my lord. But… where?"
Letho answered this time.
"Where no fool wanders and no coward reaches first."
The boy swallowed and bowed quickly. "Yes."
When he left, the scribe murmured, "The city is already asking about her."
"The city can ask," Eren said. "It does not yet get answers."
Outside the court hall, the sound of hammers had already begun.
Not rebuilding yet.
Reinforcing.
Engineers and masons were driving temporary supports into the lower palace roads, bracing damaged walls, marking cracks, redirecting foot traffic away from unstable stone. The battle had ended, but the city still shifted under memory of impact. Here and there, blue-white light flickered faintly under cracks in the lower terrace path, making laborers mutter prayers before returning to work.
The old king had ordered the lower stones sealed.
The problem was deciding what "sealed" meant after a battle with the sky.
A little before midnight, Eren went down himself.
The landing terrace looked worse in torchlight than it had during war.
Then, it had been motion.
Now it was consequence.
Broken obelisks lay across blood-black stone. The center ring had collapsed inward around the awakened seal, which still pulsed beneath the rubble with a faint, breathing blue-white glow. Ash clung to everything. The river moved beside it all in heavy silence, dark and broad and innocent-looking in the way only ancient things can be after doing violence.
Three priests of Ru stood arguing with two river-keepers and a squad of Messenger Guards.
"It must be purified fully before dawn," said one priest.
"It must be left untouched until the current settles," said a keeper.
"It is not a canal stone, it is a sacred breach!"
"It is both now!"
Eren's voice cut across them.
"It is guarded."
All five turned.
The eldest priest bowed stiffly. The eldest keeper did not bow at all, which was one of the privileges age and river service sometimes earned.
"My lord," said the priest, "if the lower ring remains active through the night without full rites—"
"Then it remains active through the night under armed watch."
The keeper gave him the briefest nod of approval.
The priest pressed on carefully. "And if what lies beneath it rises further?"
Eren looked at the seal.
It glowed once under the broken stones, as if hearing its own mention.
"Then waking men with swords will still be more useful than sleeping men with doctrine."
That ended the argument.
Mostly.
One of the younger guards came from the terrace edge, face pale under soot.
"My lord."
"What?"
"We found another one."
Letho, who had followed Eren down from the counting hall, went still.
"Enemy?" he asked.
The guard nodded.
"Caught in the lower spill-channel. Dead. Mostly."
Eren looked toward the river-dark.
"Mostly."
The guard swallowed.
"The body's dead. The weapon isn't."
That changed everything.
Eren and Letho exchanged one look.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
The war had ended, but the alien dead were not behaving like proper dead.
Eren said, "Show me."
As they moved toward the spill-channel, a cold wind came off Nam Lapi, carrying water scent, ash, and something metallic underneath.
Behind them, the broken seal pulsed once.
Ahead of them, something in the dark clicked against stone.
And above the ruined landing terrace, the sky remained clear enough to see the stars.
For now.