Ash did not linger.
He slid the last carcass deeper into shadow and padded back toward Veyra, letting the cave's hush hold around his steps without answering it. He took the silence with him instead of stopping to weigh it, nose low, ears tracking the thin draft that ran along the ribs.
He could see from far away, the shadow-threads and link went slack—first the decoy, then Riven himself—as both shades unstitched and poured back through his pads and spine. Their borrowed senses returned in a cold rush: the high line's grit on claw, stale acid in the air, no heavy bodies moving.
Ash absorbed the fragments, adjusted his map, and kept going.
Lichen washed the stone in narrow blue veins as he neared the hollow and Veyra came back into view.
She had pushed herself into a half-sit; her palms hovered near her ribs, and the aether filaments of Murkfen Knit glimmered under her skin before dimming.
"How's the pain?" Ash asked without turning.
