Luka nods wordlessly as his hands feel the tattered slashes across Gyre’s clothing. He recalls his own encounter with Seven, and how violent and wild they were. Luka hadn’t been nearly as thrashed around by the monster but he’d endured enough to know that surgically precise stab wounds were not their style.

“They don’t look burned at all either? That would have been impossible to avoid in a direct attack from Seven.” His words are somber and heavy with the weight of the truth he was now blatantly facing. “Were any of the ones who were murdered... aligned, with you?”

Not that their alignment particularly mattered anymore. Seth had walked into a scene he shouldn’t have, they now knew. But had Joanna or Zafika known the truth? Why did they have to die, in the Protector’s eyes?

“He’ll probably blame the Wizard for this. Even though she was dead, according to him. Her return is enough for him to shift the blame again.” Luka sighs. He wants to confront the Protector, to force him to explain himself. But Luka knows that he could throw the truth in the Protector’s face, scream it at him even, and the Protector wouldn’t bat an eye. He would regurgitate his same lies and Luka would end up another body in the mountain.