They didn’t make it far before they had to stop.

  Not because the road demanded rest—because the life they’d dragged out of ash did.

  The land around them dipped into a shallow basin of scrub and stone, the kind of place that hid sound poorly but hid silhouettes well enough. Eva chose it with the cold logic of someone who’d survived too many nights to believe in luck.

  “No fire,” she ordered at first. “Not yet.”

  Brannic helped clear a space while Sei lowered the massive body onto the ground with the care of a surgeon setting down a blade. Rhen—if that was what he was—looked even larger lying still. Like something carved from muscle and stubbornness. His chest rose, shallow and uneven, each breath a reminder that this was not recovery.

  This was delay.

  Sei knelt immediately, hands hovering over charred flesh, eyes tracing the damage in silent inventory. Burn lines crisscrossed his torso and arms. Some wounds were clean heat. Others were torn, ragged, as if claws had found purchase and ripped.

  Dragon.

  Sei swallowed.

  The healing he’d used back in the ash field had been a bridge built in a storm—quick, desperate, and barely standing. Now, in stillness, he could feel how fragile it was. The magic wasn’t finished. It hadn’t healed him.

  It was holding him together through sheer insistence.

  Sei placed two fingers to the side of Rhen’s thick neck. The pulse thudded—heavy, slow, wrong. Too weak for a body like this. Too stubborn to stop.

  “How is he still alive?” Brannic murmured behind him.

  Sei didn’t answer. He didn’t have one.

  He laid his palm against Rhen’s chest.

  Warmth answered him immediately—soft light blooming beneath his skin like a heartbeat remembered. It didn’t spill outward. It stayed close, disciplined. It threaded through torn tissue, tightened around ruptures, reinforced what was failing.

  But the cost came with it: pressure behind Sei’s eyes, the tremor creeping into his fingers, the faint nausea that always followed using power that wasn’t fully his yet.

  Eva crouched opposite him, watching with a quiet sharpness. Not fear. Not awe.

  Assessment.

  She glanced once at Brannic.

  Brannic met her gaze.

  Something passed between them—recognition, then reluctance.

  Eva’s jaw tightened.

  She leaned closer to Brannic, voice low enough that it barely carried.

  “It’s him,” she said.

  Brannic’s face went pale in the dim light. “I know.”

  Sei didn’t look up. His world had narrowed to breath and pulse and the thin line between them.

  Eva turned back toward Sei, hesitated, then opened her mouth.

  “Sei…” she began.

  He didn’t stop working. “What?”

  Eva’s eyes flicked to the unconscious Beast-Kin, then back to Sei. Her mouth worked, the name almost forming.

  “Sei, that’s—”

  Sei’s voice came softer than she expected. Not dismissive. Not sharp.

  “If it changes how I keep him alive,” he said, “tell me.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Eva froze.

  Sei’s hand pressed a fraction firmer as the pulse faltered beneath his palm.

  “If it doesn’t,” he continued, eyes fixed on the patient, “please don’t.”

  The air between them tightened.

  Brannic exhaled slowly, like a man forced to accept a truth he didn’t like.

  Eva’s fingers curled, then relaxed. She looked away, swallowing whatever name she’d been about to give.

  “It complicates everything,” Brannic said quietly, unable to let it go.

  Sei finally glanced up, eyes tired, focused, unwavering.

  “If he dies,” Sei said, “none of that matters.”

  He looked down again.

  The argument ended—not because it was resolved, but because there was no room for it.

  Not here.

  Not while a life still clung on.

  They waited.

  Minutes stretched. Then an hour. Then longer.

  The basin grew colder as the sun sank, the air sharpening with night. Eva finally allowed a small, hooded flame shielded between stones—just enough to warm hands without sending a beacon into the sky.

  Sei didn’t eat. Didn’t rest. Every few minutes he checked the pulse again, adjusted his touch, fed a careful thread of magic back into failing flesh.

  Not too much. Not too fast.

  He’d learned that the hard way.

  At some point, his vision blurred and he swayed. Eva’s hand closed around his shoulder again, firm.

  “Breathe,” she said.

  Sei forced air into his lungs.

  “I am,” he muttered.

  Eva’s mouth twitched as if she wanted to say something lighter—something to break the tension—and decided against it.

  Then Rhen stirred.

  It happened like a storm starting behind a closed door.

  One second still.

  The next—his massive body tensed, shoulders rolling as if he were trying to rise out of unconsciousness by force alone. His breath hitched harshly. One hand clawed at the ground, fingers digging into dirt like it owed him something.

  Sei moved immediately, bracing his palm against Rhen’s chest.

  “Easy,” Sei said. “You’re—”

  Rhen’s eyes snapped open.

  Lavender-dark, bloodshot, furious.

  He surged upward with violent strength, even half-dead, and the movement was wrong—not because it was fast, but because it should have been impossible. The healing Sei had given was a scaffold, not a cure, and still the Beast-Kin tried to stand as if his body were merely inconvenienced.

  “—not—” Sei started again.

  Rhen’s gaze locked on Sei like a weapon finding a target.

  “You,” he rasped.

  The word wasn’t gratitude.

  It wasn’t confusion.

  It was accusation.

  His hand shot out and seized Sei by the front of his coat, lifting him just enough that his knees dragged against the dirt. The grip was iron. Trembling, but iron.

  Eva moved—blade half-drawn, body between them in a heartbeat.

  “Let him go,” she warned.

  Rhen didn’t even look at her.

  His eyes stayed on Sei, wild with pain and disbelief.

  “You’re not Vael,” he snarled, voice rough like stone grinding. “Not a field priest. Not—”

  He coughed, a thick, wet sound, and for a second his strength faltered.

  Sei didn’t struggle. He didn’t reach for a weapon. He didn’t summon heat or light.

  He simply met Rhen’s gaze.

  “I’m a doctor,” he said quietly—then caught himself, corrected before the word could become a mistake in this world. “I’m… someone who fixes people.”

  Rhen’s grip tightened again, as if the statement offended him.

  “You fixed me?” he spat.

  “Enough to keep you breathing,” Sei said, voice steady despite the pressure in his chest. “If you keep moving like that, you’ll tear everything I just held together.”

  Rhen’s eyes flickered.

  The logic landed, despite the rage.

  His breathing stuttered. He fought it, fought the weakness, fought the reality his body was forcing on him.

  “You… shouldn’t have,” he growled.

  Sei didn’t flinch. “Maybe.”

  Eva’s blade hovered closer.

  Brannic stepped forward carefully, hands open. “Easy. You’re safe for the moment.”

  Rhen’s lip curled at the word safe like it was an insult.

  Then another wave of pain hit him—visible, immediate. His body shuddered. The strength bled out of his hand in a sudden, unwilling release.

  Sei dropped back to the ground, coughing once, air returning to his lungs.

  Rhen sagged, arm trembling as he tried to hold himself upright out of sheer spite. His eyes remained open, though—burning with something sharp.

  “Dragon,” he rasped, forcing the word out as if it mattered more than his own body. “It… might still be near.”

  Eva’s posture tightened. “We know.”

  Rhen’s gaze flicked finally to her—sharp, assessing—then back to Sei.

  “You…” he started again, the word thick with meaning he hadn’t chosen to share.

  His head dipped. His breath hitched.

  And then, like a mountain finally conceding gravity, he collapsed back down.

  Unconscious.

  Alive.

  The basin held its silence again, but it felt different now. Tighter. Charged.

  Eva sheathed her blade slowly, eyes still on the Rhino Beast-Kin.

  “You hear that?” she asked quietly.

  Brannic swallowed. “What?”

  “That wasn’t confusion,” Eva said. “That was instinct.”

  Sei rubbed his chest where the grip had bruised him already, then placed his hand back on Rhen’s sternum, feeling the fragile rhythm beneath.

  “He’s scared,” Sei murmured.

  Eva stared at him. “That man?”

  Sei nodded once, eyes distant.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Of the dragon.”

  Eva didn’t answer.

  But the look she exchanged with Brannic said what she didn’t want to speak aloud.

  And of what happens when he wakes fully.

  Sei kept his palm steady as the night deepened. The magic responded in careful pulses, like a lantern held against wind.

  Far away—so far it could’ve been imagination—the air carried an echo.

  Not a roar.

  Not a cry.

  Just a low, distant pressure, like something immense shifting its weight in the dark.

  Sei’s fingers tightened unconsciously.

  He didn’t look toward the sound.

  He stayed with the breath under his hand.

  Because that was what he did.

  Protect first.

  Ask later.

  And he had a feeling the questions waiting for him at the summit would not care how many lives he’d saved along the way.