Her focus was iron, closing wounds, dragging cadets back onto their feet, pushing them forward before despair could root.
Tirel's laughter rang low and throaty behind her, even as her fire incinerated an enemy soldier mid-sprint.
The storm overhead thickened. Arrows came faster, shields rattling beneath the pounding hail. Each impact rang like thunder in their ears. The cadets grunted, shoved closer together, tried to make themselves smaller under the storm.
One boy wasn't fast enough. An arrow took him in the thigh. He crumpled with a strangled cry before Elise's hands could reach him. She stumbled forward anyway, sliding through blood and mud, palms already glowing. She didn't stop until the arrow was yanked free, until the bleeding slowed, until he groaned and tried to push himself upright.
Another fell.
Then another.
Her hands shook. Her chest heaved, lungs burning as mana poured out of her in desperate streams. Her hair clung damp to her face, plastered by sweat, ash, and the smoke of Tirel's firestorms. Her arms ached with the strain of pouring so much so quickly, but she didn't stop.
Couldn't stop.
Not when Jae still stood there in the front, holding the tide back with fire and defiance. Not when the cadets around him needed someone to stitch them together faster than war could break them apart.
Her steps faltered once—just once—but she forced herself forward again.
And forward still.
Arrows hissed down, blades clashed close, the night itself seemed to roar, but Elise pressed on.
Jae caught sight of her at last.
His red eyes cut through the smoke and fire, narrowing the instant they landed on her slight frame kneeling in the blood-slick dirt. Ember Step flared under his boots, carrying him across the shield line in a streak of smoke and sparks. His blade swept down in a clean, burning arc, cleaving through a raider who had slipped past the cadets. The man collapsed in two blazing halves before his scream even finished.
Another arrow hissed toward Elise. Jae turned, his flaming sword angling up with practiced precision. The shaft struck the flat of the blade, shattered, and dissolved into cinders against the heat.
He stood over her, fire licking along his arms and shoulders, his voice low and sharp enough to cut. "Elise. What are you doing here?"
Her timid eyes lifted, but they weren't wavering. They were steady in a way that startled even her. Sweat plastered dark strands of hair to her forehead, her hands still glowing with mana as they pressed against the side of a bleeding cadet. Her voice came quiet, but firm enough to carry through the din.
"Keeping them alive," she said. "You can't hold the line without me."
For once, his ever-present smirk faltered. He wanted to argue, to drag her back by the arm, to force her into the rear where she belonged. But he couldn't ignore what he saw—her face streaked with dirt and sweat, her lips trembling with exhaustion, yet her eyes refusing to give ground. The same iron stubbornness that burned in him burned now in her, too.
His chest rose with a long, sharp breath. He sighed, dragging his hand back through his hair, sparks falling from his fingertips like embers shaken from a torch. "You're insane."
The smirk returned, faint but genuine, curling at the corner of his lips. "Stay close. I'll make sure you don't regret it."
Then the sky darkened again.
The storm of arrows redoubled, faster, heavier, rattling against shields until wood splintered and men grunted under the impact. Steel tips struck mud and flesh alike. The air itself seemed to scream as they fell, and cadets ducked lower behind their battered shields.
Elise dropped instantly, knees sinking into the churned earth beside another cadet whose leg had been shredded by an arrow cluster. Her hands glowed bright, trembling as they poured mana into broken veins and torn flesh. She breathed fast, ragged, as though each wound she closed was carved into her own skin. Her vision blurred at the edges. Her body trembled with the effort. Still, she did not stop.
Could not stop.
A raider saw her weakness. He shoved past the faltering line, his blade gleaming under the moonlight. His teeth bared in a snarl, eyes locking on the small healer bent forward and unguarded. Elise's head snapped up, too late. The sword was already raised above her.
It came down.
Fire roared.
Jae was there, moving like a streak of living flame. His Dragonfire Blade caught the raider's strike mid-swing, the impact exploding sparks outward in a burst. Heat flared so violently it warped the steel, the weapon softening and melting as if dunked into a forge. Flames crawled hungrily up the raider's blade, then his arms, consuming until the weapon shattered in a burst of molten shards.
The raider screamed, clutching at his blistering skin, stumbling back in terror and pain. He never made it two steps. Jae's molten frame blurred forward, and with a single, brutal strike, he cut the man down. Ash scattered where the body had been.
The flames curled low again, outlining Jae's form in a fiery glow as he turned back. His gaze softened a fraction at the sight of Elise, her face pale, her lips parted in shock and exhaustion.
"I told you," he said, steady, the flames around him crackling louder than the battlefield. "Stay close."
Elise's lips trembled. A dozen words pressed against them—defiance, insistence, the argument that she could take care of herself. But none made it out. Instead, what slipped past was faint, almost fragile, but clear.
"Thank you."
Byun's voice carried over the clash, smug and sharp, cutting through like a knife. "See? I knew the farmboy had a knight-in-shining-fire act buried in there somewhere. Careful, Jae—keep pulling her out of the fire, and she's going to start expecting it daily."
Shadows lashed out with his words, dragging another soldier face-first into the dirt. Byun winked in Elise's direction, his grin irrepressible even in the storm.