They hit the outer siege lines at a dead run.
Smoke choked the air. Flames licked along barricades and shattered rooftops. The city of Vaelor's Reach was burning, but it refused to die quietly — defenders on the walls loosed arrows in desperate volleys, civilians dragged wounded through the streets, and somewhere deeper inside, a bell was still ringing, stubborn and defiant.
The trio didn't slow.
Zzyzx surged outward in full combat mode, pink-azure tendrils whipping like living blades. She protected and devastated in the same breath — one tendril yanking Vesna clear of a falling beam, another lashing forward to drain a Legion soldier mid-swing, leaving the demon a shriveled husk in seconds. Her voice inside Vesna's head was sharp, focused, almost feral.
Left flank — three coming.
Leshwai earned every inch. The little gremlin swelled into his hulk form, thorns exploding outward as he slammed into a cluster of cultists, sending them flying like broken dolls. He roared — small body, enormous sound — and charged again, clearing a path through the chaos so Vesna could keep moving.
Vesna ran with her father's dagger in one hand and her eyes everywhere.
She scanned every face in the smoke. Every defender on the barricades. Every frightened civilian dragging children or hauling water buckets. Every wounded soldier being pulled toward safety.
She was looking for the caravan crest.
A sleeve. A medallion. A tattoo. A wagon panel. Anything that carried that familiar mark.
The city fought back with everything it had — a living thing, bleeding but not broken. A woman on a rooftop poured boiling oil over the wall. An old man with a spear stood in a doorway and refused to let demons pass. A child no older than ten dragged a wounded guard to safety while arrows whistled overhead.
Vesna's heart hammered. The crest had to be here. Someone had to know it.
A Legion soldier lunged at her. Zzyzx's tendril snapped out, wrapped around the demon's throat, and drained it dry in a cold rush. Vesna didn't even break stride.
Another wave came from the right. Leshwai met them head-on, thorns and imps exploding in a green fury that bought them three precious seconds.
Vesna kept searching.
Then — a flicker.
A middle-aged woman in scorched caravan leathers was dragging an injured man toward a half-collapsed gate. Her sleeve rode up as she pulled him. There, burned into the leather, was the old merchant crest — the same one on Vesna's dagger, on the records, on every memory she still carried.
The woman looked up.
Their eyes met across the chaos.
The woman hesitated for half a heartbeat — long enough for recognition to flash across her face. She knew that crest. She knew what it meant.
She opened her mouth to shout something, but a fresh wave of demons surged between them and the moment was swallowed by smoke and steel.
Vesna's breath caught.
The thread was warm again.
Inside the fire.
Inside the siege.
Inside the burning city that refused to fall.
They weren't alone anymore.