The remaining three demons tightened their extraction chain after Lucan's report burned, and the five scars opened around every wounded body nearby.
Vella felt the first replacement route before it reached the workers rescued through Rumi's bypass beyond the crater beneath the damaged route.
A black line slipped beneath a wounded man's ribs, searching for a living body to carry the demon's return through the damaged route.
Vella took his hand after he nodded, then placed gold across the line without entering the foreign command beneath his wound.
"Stay with my voice," she told him. "The route can touch the wound, but it cannot use your body."
The worker gritted his teeth while the black line pressed against Vella's golden treatment path beside the rescued civilians beyond the crater.
Two more wounded citizens reached toward her, and she connected their separate safe branches without making them part of one healing core.
