Hajin slept between casualty reports for three days while Vella treated the raw burns across his right wrist and shoulder. Each dawn brought a fresh blanket, compresses, and names from beyond the destroyed choir while his fifth Ring stayed dormant.
His focus crawled back through the sleep, but the burns kept the arm leashed.
"A cot? I'm not dying, I'm counting," he grumbled, shoving the offered cot away from the working registers.
He claimed the armchair beside the annex window instead, within grabbing distance of every sheet.
The first dawn brought forty former hosts alive across outlying districts, and the second brought duplicates from one collapsed terrace. Two offices recorded the same patients under different addresses while Hajin checked receiving signatures and Vella changed his forearm's compress.
"Two offices, one terrace, and they both counted the same damn cart," he snorted, squinting at the sheet.
