Bessia sat in a designated meditation chamber—a compact medical room reserved for post-advancement stabilization. Her breakthrough had been abrupt, so the space was lined with soul-force dampening matrices to prevent interference while her new rank settled into place.
Her body still thrummed with the residue of sustained combat—six hours of defensive strain, plant manipulation pushed to its edge, self-healing working constantly to keep all cumulative damage from turning fatal, archery precision maintained long past the point of exhaustion that should've shattered her focus.
The breakthrough had come in the final hour—when the Crawler waves felt endless, when her plant barriers failed faster than she could regrow them, when every arrow loosed felt like a last bid to stay alive.
