Vella checked the Decree Wound three times before allowing Hajin to reach for Divine Refusal.
The basin still smelled of scorched stone, and Ferra kept the shattered brace pieces lined beside the treatment cloth.
Loccy sat against a folded supply crate with both arms held close, refusing to look at the fracture lines while Vella worked.
"The sentence is attached to the wound, not the torn muscle beneath it, so identify the foreign frequency before you reject anything," Vella instructed, pressing two fingers below Hajin’s ribs.
Hajin kept his breathing slow while Divine Eye traced the white-gold command threaded through the physical damage.
The order did not sound like a voice. It felt like an old law written directly into his flesh, insisting that the cut remain open until he knelt.
Aria separated the command from Hajin’s own pain and marked its pattern without touching the surrounding tissue.
"The attached authority is isolated, and the body remains ready for treatment after removal," Aria said, holding the pattern in his vision.
Vella shifted her hand away from the scar and pointed at the ground beside the brace.
"Use the rejection once, then keep your right arm still while every Ring closes," she warned, making the cost physical before he chose it.
Hajin looked toward Loccy, whose splinted hands rested uselessly against her coat, then toward Ferra guarding the damaged equipment.
"Everyone has a safe position, and nobody moves until I wake," he replied, placing two fingers against the ring.
Divine Refusal answered with a cold pressure that emptied the surrounding sound from the basin.
The skill did not reach toward the distant Dominion God or touch the wider divine network. Its authority wrapped only around the command inside Hajin’s ribs.
White-gold words peeled away from the torn tissue, each fragment burning across his skin before dissolving into the air.
Hajin felt the rejection close around the identified frequency, then forced it out through the same path that had carried the order into him.
The Resonance Circuit went dark all at once, and six Ring seals shut across his body while Phase Lock vanished from the edge of his awareness.
Pain replaced the foreign pressure without softening, leaving Hajin bent over the basin with one hand against the stone.
Vella caught his shoulder before he fell, and Ferra shoved the brace aside to give her room.
"The command is gone, yet the wound remains open and the circuit is empty," Vella said, keeping her voice close to his ear.
Hajin tasted blood and nodded while Spirit hands formed over the torn muscle.
Vella healed the vessels first, then the deep tissue, and finally the skin around the scar without claiming that the old injury had never existed.
The process took long enough for the basin’s shadows to move across the rock, and Loccy’s breathing became the only steady sound.
"Can you close her fractured arms after my own shaking finally stops?" Hajin asked, looking at Loccy through the fog in his vision.
Vella pressed a final line of healing along his ribs before turning toward the demon girl.
"I can brace the fractures and stabilize the nerves, but she will not use all four Wings for at least six weeks," Vella answered, examining the swelling.
Loccy bared her teeth at the number, then tucked her chin behind the splints.
"Six weeks is too long for someone who was promised a rematch," Loccy complained, shifting the supports against her chest.
Hajin reached over and tapped one splint with a knuckle.
"The rematch can wait, and your arms do not get a vote while they are broken," he told her, keeping the joke beside the pain.
Loccy’s ears lowered, yet she stopped trying to flex her fingers against the bindings.
Vella secured both arms with padded braces and left the Wing seals untouched, preserving the limit instead of testing how much damage they could take.
The capital’s temporary court formed three days later inside the surviving western archive, where clerks carried casualty ledgers between shelves blackened by the avatar fire.
Hajin sat at the long table with the archive dust on his coat while Marrick sorted names into columns that refused to become abstractions.
The first page recorded fifty-seven dead and one hundred sixty-nine serious injuries across the Hunting Avatar and Ordered Court incidents.
Marrick kept three earlier laboratory victims on a separate sheet, then marked the willing council vessel and the First Prince outside the coerced-host total.
The separate lines forced the room to hold several kinds of responsibility at once, rather than letting a single category decide who deserved mourning.
Hajin traced the boundary between the pages while the King stood without a throne and the archive workers carried ash from one shelf to another.
No number restored a body, and no classification released the families waiting beyond the temporary court for an answer about what had happened.
"The Crown records coerced hosts as victims, while willing priests remain collaborators under the same evidence standard," Marrick explained, turning the pages toward Hajin.
Hajin placed a finger beside every name with a living family listed in the margin.
"Keep the families visible, and do not let a clean total erase the people who have to receive it," Hajin said, closing his hand over the paper.
The King stood at the far side of the archive in plain mourning clothes, with no palace foundation left to frame his authority.
"The displaced workers will be paid from the Crown reserve, and the temporary court stays here until reconstruction has walls," the King announced, touching the burned shelf.
No one applauded the order, and a carpenter near the door lowered his hammer and stared at the empty space where his old workplace had stood.
Didi arrived after the casualty pages closed, carrying a strip of black cloth and a list of funeral tasks written in her own hand.
The grieving sister did not ask anyone to call her brother innocent, and she refused a clerk’s attempt to move his name into a cleaner category.
"Prepare his funeral without polishing the choices that brought him here," Didi said, pressing the cloth against her palm.
Hajin stood when she left, then remained silent until the archive returned to its work.
Eirwen waited beyond the western doors with her Alder cloak folded over one arm, giving the casualty meeting a private boundary rather than entering it for status.
Eirwen approached Hajin only after Marrick closed the ledger and the King left to inspect the temporary court.
"I need a private answer from you, and I will accept it without turning the answer into a treaty," Eirwen said, stopping beside the burned arch.
Hajin rested one shoulder against the stone while Loccy’s six-week limit and the casualty totals remained behind his eyes.
"Say what you want, then let me answer as a man who still has a household to know," he replied, keeping the public ruler outside the corridor.
Eirwen drew a breath and held his gaze without the courtly smile she used before officials.
"An Alder woman uses the marital title during courtship only after declaring the future she intends and receiving leave to pursue it," she explained, touching the edge of her cloak.
Hajin waited while she searched for words that would not hide behind custom.
"I love the man who refused three different thrones, and I intend to earn a place in the home he built," Eirwen said, taking one step closer.
"I wish to call you husband, yet I will not treat a title as proof that I already belong inside your life," she finished, keeping her hands at her sides.
The request carried attraction and risk together, since a public title could pull the Alder Court toward a household that had not asked to become a court.
Hajin looked through the arch at the workers carrying burned beams, then back at the woman who had chosen a difficult answer in private.
"The title does not make us married, and you need to know this household outside the battles that brought you here," Hajin told her.
Eirwen nodded once while the archive wind lifted ash from the stone floor.
"I will learn the household, and I will withdraw if the life beside you is not one I can carry honestly," she answered, holding the boundary without flinching.
Hajin allowed the courtship under those conditions, leaving the future open instead of promising an ending neither of them could control.
Eirwen’s restrained smile appeared only after the permission became clear, and the expression held adult intention rather than a sudden victory.
"Then I shall begin honestly, husband, with conduct rather than assumption," she said, letting the chosen title enter the corridor.
Behind them, clerks carried the final casualty ledger into the temporary archive while Didi’s funeral preparations continued beyond the wall.
Hajin returned to the treatment room with his six Rings closed, his wound healed around a permanent scar, and Eirwen’s courtship accepted without turning grief into a reward.
The archive kept both choices visible, with no title placed above the names that the casualty pages had preserved.