They left together.
The walk back to the chasm felt shorter this time, maybe because Mark had already done it twice today and his brain was too tired to catalog every empty guard post on the way. Annabel stayed close, arms folded tight, jaw set.
The camp was busier when they arrived.
There were more people, bringing more noise, and more bodies.
The flat stretch of ground near the cut edge of the chasm was crowded. Guards, hunters, builders, families who had already heard enough to know they needed to be here. The rough table that usually held work plans was buried under tally sheets and hastily written reports.
They found her parents first.
Her father was lifting one end of a stretcher, helping lay a covered shape down in a growing row. Her mother was moving from body to body with a bundle of clean cloth, making sure faces were wiped and shrouds sat straight. Both moved with that stiff, careful rhythm people used when there was too much to feel and no time to feel it.
"Ma. Da." Annabel called, her voice trembling a bit.
They turned at the sound of her voice.
Her mother closed the distance in three steps and pulled her into a tight hug. Her father rested a hand on Annabel's shoulder, then gave Mark a brief nod over her head.
"You are both in one piece," he said. "Good."
"Are you alright?" Annabel leaned into her mother's shoulder. "Is anyone hurt here?"
"Some bruises from the shaking," her father said. "No cave-ins. The supports held. Anyone who was down below stayed put until the worst of it passed, like they were supposed to."
Annabel let out a shaky breath of relief.
"What about Phill?" she asked, pulling back.
Her father jerked his chin toward the far side of the field.
"Still on his feet," he said. "Hardly sat down since the first horn."
Phill was easy to spot once you knew where to look.
The captain of the West Gate stood near the end of one of the body rows, helmet off, sweat darkening his hair. He was talking quietly with another officer, posture straight out of habit more than energy. His bright blue eyes looked older in a way that had nothing to do with age.
Annabel did not walk. She ran.
"Phill!" she called, boots skidding a little on the trampled dirt as she came to a stop.
He turned, took her in, then saw Mark behind her. Some of the tightness in his shoulders eased.
"Ann," he said. His voice sounded like he had been shouting for hours and then grinding it on stone. "You are alright."
"Of course I am," she snapped, eyes wet and angry. "You were the one on the wall. Are you hurt?"
"No." He glanced down as if confirming it. There were cuts and bruises, and dried blood on his armor, but nothing that had gone deep. "Nothing that matters."
She grabbed his hand and squeezed until her knuckles went white. After a moment, she stepped aside so he could see Mark properly.
Phill's gaze met his and held.
"Word already made it here," Phill said. "People at the East are saying the gate would have gone if you had not shown up. If that had happened, the rest of us would be dragging monsters out of houses right now."
Mark shifted his weight, suddenly aware of every dried streak on his armor and the ache in his arms.
"I did my part," he said. "Same as everyone else."
Phill let out a short breath that was almost a laugh and almost a curse.
"You did more than your part," he said quietly. "It does not change that we lost good men. But it means it was not all of us."
His eyes moved back to the rows of shrouds.
Funeral work had already started. The village did not have space for many burials, and after big days like this, the ground was not exactly reliable. They burned their dead when they could. It was practical and, by now, tradition.
Lines of wood were being stacked in ordered rows. The bodies would be laid on top, more fuel piled over them, and then the pyres would be lit once the rites were said. The smoke would carry the ash up and away, instead of letting the shifting earth take them.
Mark watched in silence.
He recognized too many faces. A guard who had come into his father's smithy last year to get a dented helm reshaped. A hunter who always tipped in extra coin when buying spearheads, like she knew how much that could matter in a slow month. A man who had once stayed late in the forge just to talk about nothing important while Mark worked, because sometimes that was how you got through winter.
Now they were still, lined up like bad accounting marks on a ledger.
There was work to do, and that helped.
Annabel drifted back to her parents to help with clothes and small tasks. Phill got pulled into another talk about patrol lines and watch rotations. Mark stepped away and joined a group heading back toward the outer approaches.
If stray monsters or half-crazed animals were still lingering near the walls, it was better to deal with them before dark.
The next few hours blurred.
He followed hunters along familiar paths made strange by damage. They put down wounded beasts that had tried to crawl away from the fights and died badly in ditches and under hedges. They found three cows and a mule that had jumped or pushed through broken fences when the ground started to roll, and a pair of wild dogs with eyes that were too bright and teeth bared at everyone.
The animals that would not calm down for anyone got a quick, clean end instead of being left to cause trouble later.
Everything that might rot or attract more things was dragged back to the central piles. Cecil's people were already working there, knives flashing. Anything that could be sold or eaten would be carved out. The rest would get burned.
By the time the sun leaned hard toward the western hills, the worst of the mess near the village was handled.
The walls were still scarred. The ground was still stained. There would be more to do tomorrow. But at least nothing with claws was panting outside the gates, waiting for a weak spot.
Mark was hauling the back end of a gutted brute toward Cecil's marked butchering area when Annabel found him again.
She was dusty, tired, and had a smear of something on her cheek that might have been ash or might have been worse. She was not alone.
Walking beside her was one of the builders. A broad-shouldered man with deep lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes that always looked like they were halfway through a squint. Mark knew him by sight from the chasm works and the reinforced frames there.
"Mark," Annabel called. "This is Foreman Jerrik."
Mark dropped the carcass near the edge of the work area and wiped his hands on a relatively unbloody patch of his trousers before offering one.
"I know who you are," Jerrik said, gripping it. His palm felt like old rope. "You are the smith who made that metal with the purple and green mixed hue we used on the chasm supports."
"That is me," Mark said. "What do you need, Foreman?"
"We are going to have to rebuild parts of the East Gate," Jerrik said, wasting no time. "Today showed us exactly where it gives. The beasts did the testing for us. I do not plan to let the same weak points stand."
"That matches what I saw from inside," Mark said.
"We can fix the wood and stone," Jerrik went on. "That is just labor. But I want the main struts and the brackets that hold the braces to the wall done in your alloy. That mix you used down at the chasm has not shifted a finger's width, even with all the shaking we have had this year."
Mark thought of the way the East Gate had shuddered under the monsters. He pictured those same impacts hitting metal that did not like to bend and resisted damage even more when someone tried to tear it apart.
"That can be done," he said. "You know what that costs. I need purple and green ore, a lot of it, and it is not exactly sitting in neat piles."
"We will get it," Jerrik said. "We are already talking to the hunters and the escort crews. They know the veins you marked when you were helping us test samples. They will bring it in. If anyone grumbles, the captains will remind them what a broken gate looks like."
Annabel snorted once under her breath.
Mark nodded.
"Bring me exact measurements," he said. "Width, depth, how you plan to set the plates. I am not having you hacking at finished alloy with chisels in the field and then acting surprised when you crack your tools when you realize that it can't be re-worked."
Jerrik's mouth twitched, almost a smile.
"You think I let apprentices take hammers to anything that important?" he said. "You will have measurements. We will build the wood around your metal, not the other way around."
"Good," Mark said. "We have a deal, then."
They clasped wrists briefly. No big show, just two tired men agreeing there was more work coming.
Jerrik stomped off to shout at someone about brace angles.
Annabel stayed.
"You are really going to do it," she said quietly. "Tie your alloy into the gates."
"If this place is going to stay standing, yes," Mark said. "The ground is not getting kinder, and whatever comes with these quakes is not getting smaller. Today was bad, but I don't think it was the worst it can get."
She looked back toward the walls, lips pressed together.
"Phill said something like that," she murmured. "He thinks next time will be worse. That this was a warning."
Mark grunted.
"Then we treat it like one."
Before he could sink too far into that, a guard walked up with a tally slate and a tired slump to his shoulders.
"Rover," the man said. "We are counting kills for shares. You did more work than half the patrols. If we do not get it written right, Cecil will swear you only poked two rabbits and a sick goat."
From the butchering line, Cecil's voice floated over.
"I heard that, Karlo, and for the record, I was going to give him at least three rabbits."
Grom grunted something that might have been a laugh.
Mark exhaled through his nose.
"Fine," he said. "Let us settle it."
They went through it. Bodies that could be traced back to where he had fought at the East. Witnesses from the walls. The dead he had dragged in himself. Numbers were always messy on days like this, but the guard with the slate did his best to keep it honest, and no one argued that Mark had earned a heavy share.
Cecil and Grom wandered over as the counting finished. Cecil had blood up to his elbows, and Grom's apron was stained so badly it might as well have been dyed that color.
"We will handle the usual," Cecil said. "Organs, hides, teeth. Anything that sells. You come by in a day or two, and I will have your cut sorted. Coin and whatever bits you want to keep for your own work."
"Thirty percent fee," Grom reminded him.
"Twenty-five today," Cecil said at once. "Anyone who keeps those gates standing gets the discount, or the hunters will start dropping off their trash kills on my doorstep out of spite."
Mark lifted his hands.
"You two know your trade," he said. "I am happy to let you pretend gutting things is fun while I stand near a hot fire and hit metal."
Cecil snorted.
"Excellent," he said. "You keep making the good alloy. We will make sure you have meat on the table and charcoal for the fire."
They went back to their work.
For a moment, Mark just stood there.
His muscles ached in that dull, deep way that promised he would feel it even worse in the morning. His lungs were raw from shouting and smoke. Under all of that sat the same lump of anger and helplessness that had been growing since the first horn sounded.
The sun had not quite gone down. There was still light across the sky, turning the edges of the clouds orange and red.
His eyes drifted toward the forge.
Toward heat that did what it was told, and metal that eventually listened if you were stubborn enough.
Something inside him pulled that way. Not a gentle tug. A hard one.
He looked at Annabel.
"I need to work," he said.
She studied his face for a moment, looking deep into his eyes, then nodded.
"In the forge," she said. "Of course."
"If I sit still, I am going to start thinking too much," he said. "If I start thinking too much, I am going to see these rows of bodies every time I blink. I would rather put that into something solid."
Her eyes softened even as her mouth stayed firm.
"Alright," she said. "I will stay with my family for the fires. Come find me when you are done trying to beat the world into a shape you like better."
"I will try not to burn the village down while I am at it," he said.
"Do not joke about that," she said. There was the smallest hint of a smile anyway. A smile that promised to make the sun shine a little brighter, lifting a bit of the heavy atmosphere that was upon the village after such a disaster. At least, it seemed that way to Mark.
He squeezed her hand once, then let go and turned toward the smithy.
The day had already taken more than enough.
If he had anything to say about it, the next time the ground shook and the monsters came, they were going to find a different village. One with stronger walls and harder steel.
And a sword that would not forgive him if he failed with it in his hands.