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F2's transfer from Seraph to Alex took four hours.
It wasn't clean — no Fragment transfer was. It was slow, costly for both of them, with Alex's corruption responding to the fifth Fragment the same way it had responded to each previous one but amplified because five Fragments in the same channel produced cross‑interference that a single one didn't.
Emily holding Purifying Light for all four hours.
Seraph without F2 for the first time in fifteen years.
At the end of the four hours, Alex had five points of light on his chest, and Seraph had the specific silence of someone who had just lost something that had been part of her longer than most people have memories.
That was the morning.
The afternoon was something else.
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[Threshold Port — North Dock — 2:00 PM]
Seraph on the north dock.
Without F2. Without the Paladin's scythe. Without the spiritual signature the team had learned to read as part of what Seraph was.
