Morgana hadn't moved.
For one moment after the portal deposited them, she had simply stood there — and then her gaze found the fountain, found the small green-haired shape lying at its base, and something in her that had survived a thousand years of careful, deliberate composure simply stopped functioning.
She crossed the plaza faster than Satou's eyes could properly track.
She was on her knees beside Freda before anyone else had taken a second step, her hands moving with the precise, practiced speed of someone who had done this — checked for breath, checked for pulse, checked for the dozen small signs that separated alive from not — more times than she could count across a millennium of outliving people she loved.
Freda was breathing.
