NEVA POV
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We traveled to the Aldric territory as a smaller party than the Vesk Hollow rescue had required — Talia, Daven, myself, and Silo running quiet security at a careful distance, the whole approach designed to feel like conversation rather than intervention.
Corin Aldric was twenty, restless in the specific way of someone carrying a grievance he didn't fully understand the shape of, and when Talia found him — alone, at a territorial gathering Daven had identified as his regular haunt — she approached with none of the formal weight this compound usually brought to such conversations.
"Can I sit," she asked, simply, settling onto the bench beside him before he'd fully answered.
He looked at her, wary. "Do I know you?"
"No," she said. "But I think we might understand something
