He came back on a Thursday.
No announcement. No message ahead of time. Just a knock on Caelan's office door at eleven-fifteen on a Thursday morning, and Damien appearing in the doorway with the expression he wore when something had happened that he had not anticipated and was recalibrating around.
"Riven," Damien said.
That was all.
Caelan set down his pen.
He looked different.
Not dramatically. Not the way people looked different in films when they had been somewhere significant — tanned, transformed, visibly changed. He looked like Riven. Same face, same bearing, same dark eyes that assessed rooms automatically.
But something underneath it was quieter.
The specific quality of someone who had been somewhere without the thing that usually defined them and had discovered they still existed without it.
He sat down across from Caelan's desk.
Caelan looked at him.
Riven looked back.
"Where did you go," Caelan said.
