The aftermath settles in layers, not all at once, because adrenaline lies to you first and lets the weight arrive later, when there is time and space for it to sink its claws in. The packhouse smells like iron and smoke and disturbed stone, and even after the wounded are moved and the breaches sealed, the air still hums with vigilance that refuses to unwind.
I am sitting on the edge of a bench near the infirmary when my hands start shaking, not from fear exactly, but from the delayed recognition of how close everything came to snapping. My knuckles are scraped where I braced myself against the wall during the last push, and someone presses a cloth into my palm without asking.
“Hold that,” Mara says gently. “You’re bleeding.”
“Am I,” I reply, surprised by how distant my own body feels as
