Her breathing slows within minutes. Evens out. The rhythm shifts from conscious control to genuine rest.
She’s asleep.
Either trusting my senses to catch threats, or too exhausted to care about the risk.
I study her in the darkness.
Lean frame. Dark circles beneath closed lids. Hands that tremble even in sleep. She’s been running for a while. Fighting longer. Her body is consuming itself to fuel magic that costs more than she can afford.
The scout she killed permanently. That’s why the others fled.
With enough power, an Anchor could kill things that aren’t supposed to die.
The thought surfaces without warning.
She shifts in her sleep. Her hand twitches, fingers curling around nothing. A dream, maybe. A nightmare. Her breathing stutters for a moment before evening out again.
I watch her.
She’s a liability. A complication. A wandering beacon that will draw worse things to my territory if I let her stay.
I shouldn’t have left that ridge to find her.
I did.
Dawn breaksgray and cold everywhere except here.
She wakes slowly—a gradual return of consciousness that marks genuine rest. Her eyes open, focus, find me still in the same position.
“You didn’t sleep.”
I don’t respond.
She pushes herself upright and checks her body with practiced precision.
“The scouts will track me.” She meets my gaze. No pleading. No manipulation. Facts. “More of them. Probably worse. Whatever I did that caught their attention, they’re not going to stop.”
“Then you have a problem.” I let the words land. No softening. No offer. Just the blunt edge of a fact she already knows, and the silence afterward to see what she does with it.
“I can be useful.”
“You can barely stand.”
She flinches. Covers it quickly, but I catch the reaction.
“That’s temporary.” Her mouth tightens. “The cost scales with use. Give me a day to recover?—”
“You’ll slow me down, draw more monsters, and eventually die in a way that creates problems I’ll have to solve.”
Silence.
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t plead. Looks at me with those dark eyes, calculating odds I already know.
She’s dead without help. We both understand that.
This witch is outside my parameters.
The scouts she attracts will enter my parameters eventually.
