The path back to Vel'Serath was quieter than expected.
Miles and Sarissa walked side by side, boots crunching over dry roots and ash-slick soil, the night sky yawning above them like an open wound stitched with stars. The Blistered Grove lay behind them, that strange den and the monster within now ash and memory.
Neither spoke much on the return.
Not because there wasn't plenty to say, but because neither quite knew what to say.
The mission had been strange, yes. Dangerous? Without a doubt.
But it hadn't gone wrong.
They hadn't been betrayed, no one tried to slit their throats in the dark, no hidden price demanded at the end. Even Harl, impaled and grinning, had seemed more amused than angered.
"I kept waiting for something to go sideways." Sarissa finally broke the silence as the root-path rose into the lower outskirts of the city. The shimmer of Vel'Serath's lichen-lit towers gleamed faintly ahead.
