The tag turned toward them when the creature lifted its armored shoulder.
Eli read the final letters first. The beginning remained behind a torn strap until the body shifted again. Beside him, the Aegis scout held the joint missing-person record flat against the inside of their cover.
“Leron Vask,” the scout said.
The creature turned its head toward his voice.
For a moment nobody moved.
Eli felt the name become more than engraving in the minds around him. A missing hunter. A figure wearing that hunter’s armor. A turn at the sound of the hunter’s name. It was the beginning of a story so complete that the missing evidence could disappear inside it.
“Stay behind cover,” Tessa said.
The creature had not answered. It had moved toward a sound from people who had just fought it. That could be recognition, conditioning, a retained association or the ordinary attention of a dangerous thing watching its opponents. Eli had no remains on which Gravekeeper could establish a name or cause of death. Metal carrying a registration did not give him the right question to ask the native talent.
