The green light settled into Serena's body like rain into parched soil. Gavriel could feel it working, could feel her insides unclenching, the burns cooling, the raw places smoothing over. His magic moved through her with the easy, instinctive certainty of water finding cracks.
His eyes were on Dexmon and Fin. Both still golden. Both still standing on the shore like matching monuments to something he didn't have a name for. His attention stayed there for three seconds, four, five, trying to make the math work on why his two friends looked like they were sharing a brain.
Then something tugged.
His focus snapped back to Serena so fast she flinched.
There it was again. His magic had seeped deeper without his permission, the way it had on Volcano island, sinking past the injuries and the fatigue into the architecture underneath, and something was wrong down there. Something that didn't belong.
It felt like a weed.
