Liora was waiting for me in the temple courtyard.
Not cycling through an idle animation, not following a patrol path, not doing any of the things NPCs did when players were not actively engaging them. Just sitting on the stone bench with the stillness of something that had decided to be in a specific place and had no competing directives pulling it elsewhere. Watching the temple entrance. Like she had known exactly when I would come through it.
"You look terrible," she said, as I crossed the courtyard toward her. "Death sickness will do that. But you have something else going on."
"Rough few hours," I said, and sat down on the bench beside her because my legs had made it clear they were done performing opinions about seating arrangements.
She looked at me with the continuous, non-scrip
