Alycia was so tired. Bone-tired in a way that sleep alone could not fix. She had been sorting bodies for days now, moving from one broken form to the next with numb hands and a mind that refused to linger. Names, faces, screams—they were all blurring together. The aftermath of the fight against the Demon Queen was simply too much. There were mountains of corpses, stacked and restacked as space ran out, the air thick with rot, blood, and spent mana.

  She had stopped flinching at the sounds days ago. The crack of cooling armor. The wet shift of bodies being moved. The occasional sob that slipped out when someone recognized a sigil, a face, or a weapon that should not have been there.

  Then a hand rested gently on her shoulder, warm despite the chill clinging to everything else. The scent of hot chocolate tickled her nose, rich and impossibly comforting. Alycia groaned softly at the sensation—at smelling something other than death for the first time in days. She took the offered cup without looking up, fingers curling around the heat as if by instinct alone.

  "Help has arrived," Sylt said quietly near her ear. His voice was calm, steady, deliberately unhurried. "I am just sorry it took so long."

  "There was a Demon King," Alycia replied flatly. It was not an accusation—just a statement of fact.

  "Would you believe me if I told you that Archdruid Peter killed it all alone?" Sylt asked, a trace of disbelief and restrained laughter slipping through despite himself.

  Alycia took a sip—and immediately spat it back into the dirt. "Excuse me?" she croaked. "He did what?"

  "Between the hostile life of the deep oceans, dragon turtles, and the Primeval Hydra bleeding out and turning the entire bay into boiling acid," Sylt explained, "all Peter truly had to do was stop it from making landfall."

  She squinted up at him. "So he immobilized it."

  "No," Sylt said. "He killed it. Completely. Used a skill or spell he never wants to touch again. Poisoned it somehow—ate it alive from the inside while the acid finished the rest from the outside."

  Alycia stared into her cup for a long moment, then nodded and released a breath she felt like she had been holding since the message arrived.

  "His biggest complaint," Sylt added carefully, "was that it was inedible."

  A weak snort escaped her before she could stop it. "Of course it was. Food is all he thinks about."

  "Speaking of food," Sylt said gently, "my kin have brought some."

  Her stomach chose that moment to betray her, growling loudly. Alycia grimaced. "But there is still so much work," she said. "So many bodies."

  Before Sylt could respond, Antionette descended nearby, wings folding neatly behind her. She activated a skill, and the earth trembled as tunnels opened across the field. This time, it was not swarms of ordinary ants that emerged, but bipedal ones—smaller echoes of Antionette herself, moving with practiced coordination.

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  "Come, my legion," Antionette intoned, her voice resonant but subdued. "The fighting is done. We now tend to what remains."

  What followed was not chaos, but structure.

  Alycia watched with wide, exhausted eyes as the ants flowed into the field like a living system. Demonic corpses were identified, separated, and stacked for dissolution. Mortal dead were handled differently—lifted with care and carried to waiting pairs of fey. The Seelie worked with gentle precision, mending torn flesh, closing wounds, restoring bodies not for life, but for dignity. When they were done, the Unseelie stepped forward, encasing each body in clear, flawless ice—preservation without illusion.

  No one spoke of resurrection. No one pretended this could be undone.

  As the system took hold, Sylt guided Alycia away from the field. She barely registered the distance until the ground beneath her boots changed texture. She looked up—and stopped.

  Flowers stretched out before her.

  For a moment, Alycia could not process what she was seeing. Color hit her like a physical thing—soft greens, pale golds, blues that had no business existing here. Her eyes stung as if the light itself were too loud. After days of red-brown mud, blackened armor, and the gray pallor of the dead, the living hues felt wrong. Disorienting. Like stepping into a memory she did not belong in anymore.

  Her breath hitched. Part of her expected the flowers to rot the moment she focused on them, to collapse into corpses if she blinked. Another part of her resented them for daring to exist at all.

  "Did…" she started, then faltered. "Did a new dungeon already take over this area?" The question came out thin, uncertain, as if she needed there to be a reason for this—something external she could blame.

  "No," Sylt replied. "The forces suppressing life here were pruned. There is mana in abundance now. Life simply responded."

  "It’s beautiful," Alycia whispered, though the word felt borrowed. Beauty was for a world that made sense.

  "You only think so because of what you have endured," Sylt said gently. "This is not hope. It is capacity. The land can breathe again, even if the people cannot yet."

  She swallowed and nodded, feeling suddenly very small beneath the open sky.

  "This is recovery," he finished. "There is a difference."

  She nodded slowly.

  "Twenty thousand non-combat fey have arrived," he continued. "They are not here to save anyone. They are here to process what remains—people and bodies alike. Matthias also sent slimes. They will break down the demonic matter efficiently."

  "Slimes," Alycia murmured. "That… actually makes sense."

  Nearby, other survivors were being guided toward long tables. Some were silent, eyes hollow. Others spoke in rushed bursts once a fey sat beside them—voices cracking as they described moments they could not forget. Friends they did not save. Choices they replayed endlessly. The fey did not interrupt. They listened. They anchored. They recorded nothing, but they remembered.

  "We will get through this," Sylt said.

  "I know," Alycia replied. "But we cannot fix it. The Empire is already fracturing."

  "No," Sylt agreed. "But life will continue."

  He guided her to a seat. The table was already set. Food of every kind stretched out before them—not celebratory, not extravagant, but grounding. Real. He placed a bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of her.

  Alycia tore off a heel of bread, dipped it into the broth, and took a bite.

  The taste broke her.

  Tears spilled freely as warmth and flavor filled her mouth. Sylt sat beside her, steady and quiet, cleaning her face as she cried and ate at the same time. Around them, others broke as well—soldiers, adventurers, mages—people who had been standing upright only because something still needed doing.

  Alycia felt herself slipping before she realized it. One moment she was lifting the spoon. The next, darkness.

  Sylt smiled softly as he caught her. He carried her to a waiting tent, tucked her in, and let her sleep.

  The fey continued their work long into the night.