Across the gap, Torven was already awake. "I heard it too," he said. "It offered me a sure hit on loneliness."
"Refuse."
"I am refusing."
They sat awake until the counterfeit comfort soured and withdrew. Dawn was still far. The seal-stone dripped. Somewhere in the ruin a small animal relocated its life with a rustle. The world continued, indifferent and available.
In that long grey waiting, Serenya took the yellow-fletched arrows from her quiver and laid them on a flat stone. Twelve shafts. She counted them the way some people counted prayers. Then she snapped one cleanly across her knee—not in rage, in inventory. One less sure hit in the world. She left the broken halves on the stone for the rain to find.
Torven watched without interfering. "Symbolic," he said carefully.
"Practical," she corrected. "I still have eleven. I still know how to shoot wolves and warning shots and targets that are not bound into anyone's lattice. I am not retiring craft. I am retiring the fantasy that every bright feather is innocent."
He took one of his own throwing knives—short, serviceable—and set it beside the broken arrow without breaking it. "I keep mine," he said. "But I am naming what it is for: cutting rope, digging mint, threatening people who bring tidy ropes. Not completing bindings. If I forget, remind me in public."
"I will," she said. "Public is harder. That is why it counts."
When grey light finally returned, Callen had not yet come back, which was either travel time or trouble. They ate. They checked palms. They checked the trail in both directions. They did not step onto the seal.
"One more day on the same trail," Serenya said, as if reading a contract aloud.
"One more day," Torven said. "Then another check."
It was not a vow carved in concentric circles. It was better than that: revisable, adult, unfinished on purpose.
The night did not heal them.
It did, however, leave the decision open until morning—and morning, when it came, would find them still choosing the same trail for one more day, not because trust was complete, but because competence and a stubborn, unfinished mercy had not yet run out.