She reached across the table and took his hand.
"I don’t want you to go," she said, with the particular honesty she reserved for moments that mattered most. "I want you here, close, present. That’s the truth, and I’m not going to dress it up as anything else." She met his eyes. "But I also know that every day you stay here, Chronus gets closer to finishing. And the people already inside whatever boundary he’s drawing—"
"—get closer to being permanently gone," Satou finished.
"Yes." She squeezed his hand. "So go. Not alone — take Seraphina at minimum. And you check in with me. Every day. If you can’t reach me directly, you find a way to send word through Morgana’s relay."
"Every day," Satou agreed.
"And the moment you have a location — the moment you know where he is — you tell me before you do anything else. I need to know."
"I will."
"And you come back," she said. "After."
She said it the way she said things that were important — plainly, without embellishment, with the full weight of what she meant behind it.
"I’ll come back,i promise" Satou said.
She held his gaze for a moment, looking for any sign that the words were performance rather than fact.
She found none.
"Then go find him," Lyra said quietly. "Before he finishes what he started."
=====================
[The Next Day]
The settlement woke before Satou did.
He’d been sleeping lighter than usual across the three days since returning from Vael’kira — not poorly, not anxiously, just with a portion of his awareness remaining surface-level, the habit of someone who had spent enough time in crisis that complete rest felt like incomplete vigilance. He’d become aware of the settlement’s morning sounds gradually, the way he always did: construction crews starting up in the eastern sector, the kitchen smoke beginning, Vessa’s serpentfolk completing their pre-dawn perimeter sweep and filing their reports to the morning watch.
Normal sounds. Settlement sounds. The particular rhythm of a community that had learned to function under pressure without making pressure the entirety of its identity.
He lay still for another moment, feeling the familiar warmth of Lyra against his left side and Jessica against his right, and deliberately remembered where he was. Who was here. What he was leaving for.
Then he got up carefully, dressed in the dark, and went to stand at the window.
The settlement was grey and soft in the pre-dawn. He’d stood at this window on a hundred mornings just like this — after late planning sessions, after nightmares about the war, after the nights when the weight of everything he was responsible for pressed too directly on whatever part of him registered weight. He’d always found the same thing: the settlement continuing. Still there. Still building itself into something larger than the crisis that had most recently tried to end it.
He found it again now.
Lyra’s voice came from behind him, quiet and unhurried.
"You’ve been awake for twenty minutes," she said. Not a question.
"I didn’t want to wake you."
"You didn’t." She sat up, pulling the blanket around her shoulders against the morning cool. "I’ve been awake for thirty."
He turned. She was looking at him from the bed with the steady, assessing gaze he’d known for five years — the look that didn’t miss anything and didn’t pretend to.
"Today," she said.
"Yes," he said. "Today."
She was quiet for a moment. Jessica stirred slightly on her other side but didn’t wake — she’d been working long hours managing the medical reports from Vael’kira’s survivors and her body had finally begun insisting on its due.
"Seraphina arrives at first light," Lyra said. "Morgana’s portal."
"Yes."
"Freda’s coming with you."
He paused. "You knew she’d ask."
"I expected it," Lyra said. "I expected you to say yes, too. She’s the only person alive who has been in direct combat with his temporal field and had time to analyze it. Refusing to bring that knowledge along because she can no longer cast would be tactically irrational." She paused. "It would also be cruel, and you don’t do cruel things."
Satou crossed back to the bed and sat on the edge of it. Lyra reached for his hand automatically.
"I’ve been thinking about what you said," Satou said. "About the Church timeline. If Caldris accelerates—"
"Cael is here," Lyra said. "He knows their doctrine. Their tactics. Their operational structure." She held his gaze. "Vessa has run seventeen additional perimeter drills in the last week without being asked. Gruk is coordinating with Valka and the high orc unit on the northern approach positions. Kelvin has been working with Senna on the intelligence relay so we have the fastest possible warning time if the Inquisitors move before their projected timeline." She paused. "I have been managing this settlement’s defense since before the war. I know how to do this."
"I know you do," Satou said. "That’s not what I’m worried about."
She looked at him.
"I’m worried about you," he said simply.
Lyra was quiet for a moment. The particular quiet of someone receiving something they hadn’t expected and were deciding how to hold it.
"I’m not going to pretend I’m not worried about myself," she said finally. "Not because of the settlement — I can manage the settlement. But because you’ll be gone, and—" She stopped. Started again. "We’ve never done this before. With the pregnancy. I’ve always been able to reach you. And now you’ll be in unmapped territory where the communication relays don’t cover, and I’ll be—" She looked down at her hand in his. "I’ll be waiting for daily check-ins that may not always come through."
"They’ll come through," Satou said. "Whatever I have to do to make them reach you."
"I know," Lyra said. "I’m not asking you to promise that. I’m just—" She met his eyes. "Being honest. Because that’s what we do."
"Yes," he said. "It’s what we do."
He leaned in and kissed her — not urgently, not dramatically, just the long, familiar warmth of someone saying everything that didn’t need words because they’d been saying it without words for years.
When he pulled back, Lyra’s composure was entirely intact and her eyes were very bright.
"Daily check-ins," she said. "Whatever it takes."
"Whatever it takes," he agreed.
==
Jessica was awake by the time Seraphina’s portal opened in the outer courtyard, having clearly been faking sleep for the last twenty minutes. She said nothing about this. She simply appeared at the door in her healer’s robes, medical bag in hand, and spent ten minutes very efficiently checking Satou’s physical state with the thoroughness of someone who intended to know exactly what condition he’d left in so she could compare it to what returned.
"You’re eating properly," she said, with the approval of someone who had expected to find otherwise.
"Lyra enforces it," Satou said.
"Good." She set the bag down and looked at him directly, the way Jessica looked at things she wanted him to understand rather than simply hear. "Come back. Not as instruction. As— " She paused, searching. "As the thing I want more than anything that I have no practical ability to guarantee, so I’m saying it out loud because it matters to me that you know it."
He pulled her into a proper embrace — the kind she gave, arms all the way around, complete and unceremonious. She held it for a moment.
"Come back," she said again, quietly, into his shoulder.
"I will," he said.
—----
Seraphina came through the portal with her wings folded. She’d left her own territory in the care of her senior commanders, brought two of her best scouts as additional support, and had the look of someone who had made their decision and found it restful rather than anxious.
She looked at Satou, then at the settlement around him, then back.
"Ready?" she said.
"Almost," Satou said.
Morgana was already waiting near the portal.
She looked — not different, exactly. Morgana rarely looked different regardless of what she was carrying. That was the specific gift of a thousand years — the ability to hold grief and rage and purpose simultaneously without any of them visibly overwhelming the others. But there was something in the quality of her stillness that Satou had learned, in the weeks since Vael’kira, to read as the kind of controlled intention that preceded significant action.
She had packed practically. One bag, efficiently organized. Her staff — the working one, not the ceremonial kind she sometimes carried for Loki’s formal occasions. Travel robes rather than the structured garments she wore in Vael’kira.
"You don’t have to come," Satou said.
"I know," Morgana said.
"Loki needs—"
"Loki has what he needs to manage Vael’kira’s recovery," Morgana said. "He has his garrison commanders, his administrative staff, and three of my secondary mages who are fully capable of handling the ward maintenance." She looked at Satou directly. "What this mission needs is someone who has personally stood inside an active Temporal Severance working and understands what they’re looking at." She paused. "I am the only person alive who has done that."