The day on the battlefield starts like any other as the artillery had finally stopped, but the ringing in her ears was a permanent tenant now, and the soldiers rushed into the fray.
Smoke choked the sky, turning the world into a shifting haze of black and ember-red. She stumbled through it, boots slipping on broken concrete and blood-slick ground, searching for the voice that had cried out moments earlier.
There—an arm, trembling. A man half-buried under a collapsed wall.
She did not think. She never did. Her body moved on instinct alone. She braced her shoulder against a slab of shattered masonry and pushed until something gave—stone scraping stone—enough space to drag him free. His uniform was scorched, his breathing shallow, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
[???]: Stay with me.
The words left her mouth automatically. Not comfort. Not hope. Just procedure.
Blood surged from a torn artery in his thigh, bright and rhythmic. She opened her field kit with her teeth, her hands steady and precise. Gauze packed deep. Tourniquet cinched tight. Pressure applied. Pulse checked.
Breathe. Live. That was all that mattered.
Shouting cut through the smoke.
Then more. Closer.
She recognized the sound of safeties disengaging, even though she had never once held a weapon herself.
[???]: Almost… done… Stay with me private.
She hooked her arms beneath his shoulders and began to lift.
The rifle shot was deafening.
[Soldier #1]: This is for Mikey.
Pain erupted across her chest—hot, sudden, impersonal. She looked down, observing with distant curiosity as red bloomed across the white of her coat. Her legs gave out. The man she had pulled from the rubble slipped from her grasp and collapsed beside her.
Bootsteps approached, distorted through the ringing.
[Soldier #2]: Goddammit, Connor. Did you just shoot the kid who dug you out once?
[Soldier #1 (Connor)]: This piece of work left Mikey to bleed out in that building. Took her sweet time playing angel while my brother died alone.
[Soldier #2]: Doesn't matter now. Leave her. Blame it on the enemy advance. You know what happens if the battalion finds out our good little doctor died here.
He crouched beside her. Her vision tunneled, edges fading to gray, but his face remained clear—tired, hollow, regret that meant nothing. He smiled gently, as if that made it kinder.
[Soldier #2]: Sorry, kid, Soldiers need reasons. Makes the killing easier, and nightmares quieter.
The betrayal crystallized in that moment, colder than the rain. They saw her as a pawn to be discarded, the last thing she saw as he leveled his sidearm again—this time at the terrified private.
No.
The second shot was not a crack, but a roar. A thunderclap of finality that erased sound, sight, and pain in an instant.
The world fades to black.
…-…-…-…-…
She drifted—not falling, not rising—until something touched her.
[Voice]: "Your duty has ended here; now it is needed somewhere else, little one."
Darkness receded—not gently, but as if peeled away.
She reached upward on instinct and felt resistance. A ceiling. Rough stone, cold and fractured, faintly humming with residual dust. Sensation returned in fragments: pressure, heat, weight. Her body felt present again—heavy, grounded, alive in a way it hadn't been moments before.
Her white coat was gone.
Instead, she wore layered protective gear: reinforced fabric stitched with burn-resistant plates, somewhere between a firefighter's suit and a SWAT uniform. It smelled faintly of ash and antiseptic.
Her skin felt warm—too warm.
She lifted a hand to her head and froze.
Two protrusions, smooth and solid beneath her fingers. Horns?
Her pulse did not quicken. There was no panic, no disbelief. Only confirmation.
She lowered her hand and examined her gloves. Heavy-duty, medical-grade, insulated against heat. When she removed one, faint black-violet light leaked from her palm, pulsing softly in time with her heartbeat. Glowing veins traced thin lines beneath her skin.
She flexed her fingers. The glow responded, dimming, then stabilizing. Obedient.
The light revealed her surroundings: shattered stone, scorched earth, and the unmistakable architecture of a land torn apart and rebuilt too many times.
Beside her lay a compact medical kit—military issue, sealed, untouched by ash.
Next to it were several loose sheets of paper, handwritten, their edges already curling.
She reached for them.
Flame bloomed without warning.
The papers ignited soundlessly, and orange light reflected in her eyes. She reacted without panic—only reflex. Her fingers plunged into the black sand at her side, coarse and warm, and she smothered the fire with a single, practiced motion. Ash scattered. What remained she lifted carefully, one gloved hand holding the pages, the other raised as a dim source of light.
The glow came from her skin.
She did not question it.
Charred words bled through the paper, fragmented but legible enough.
[Burned] Sacrifice [Burned]
[Burned] New life as [Burned]
[Burned] The kit bears [Burned] new powers—healing and [Burned]
[Burned] The bodyguard will [Burned]
[Burned] You may choose to live [Burned]
[Burned] Or keep your oath [Burned]
[Burned] May this time you [Burned]
Her eyes stopped on a single surviving word.
Oath.
She lowered the pages. Ash slipped through her fingers, carried away by the stale wind of the ruins.
Only then did she become aware of herself.
She rose unsteadily and began to examine her body with the same detached thoroughness she had once reserved for triage. The unfamiliar uniform came off in practiced motions—efficient, unembarrassed—observation before reaction.
Her skin glowed faintly, veins traced with a subdued orange light beneath flesh that radiated heat. Her hair, once dark, now burned softly like banked embers. From her lower back extended a slender tail, its tip crowned with a small, steady flame that flickered in response to her breathing.
She pressed her palm to the ground. The stone beneath softened, edges blurring as heat bled from her body into the earth. With focus, she pulled it back in, the glow dimming. Controlled. Regulated. Like closing a valve.
A furnace—contained.
The uniform, when she slipped it back on, absorbed the excess heat seamlessly. Fire-retardant weave. Designed not to protect her from flames—but to protect the people from her.
She turned to the medical kit.
Compact. Familiar weight. Balanced the way her hands expected it to be.
When she opened the first drawer, soft white indicator lights activated on their own, illuminating a precise layout of instruments—some reassuringly standard, others subtly wrong.
Injectors with altered circuitry etched into their casings. Sterile bandages woven with slow-release anti-inflammatories. A folded manual sealed in polymer film, its cover marked with unfamiliar Sarkaz sigils layered over medical notation.
She did not question it. She memorized it.
The second drawer held surgical tools: scalpels of varying length, needles of differing gauges, suturing threads reinforced with unknown fibers. Compact stabilizers designed to steady organs, limbs, or something more volatile. Everything was clean. Everything was ready.
The third drawer was colder.
Blood bags, neatly slotted. Clear labeling.
"Sarkaz?"
"Cautus?"
"Feline?"
"Forte?"
"Liberi?"
"Vouivre?"
She stared at them longer than the others.
Compatibility charts were printed beneath each tag. Notes. Adjustments. Warnings.
Someone had anticipated her patients.
The final drawer resisted for a moment before opening.
Inside lay a compact sidearm, unfamiliar but well-maintained. No ornamentation. No insignia. Just function.
Beneath it, a single folded note.
She opened it.
[I couldn't protect you. So let this protect you.]
Rising from the ruins, she stepped into a world washed in red. The sky burned low and heavy, dust drifting like ash. The land was silent in the way only battlefields ever were—after the screaming had finished.
Bodies lay scattered across the cracked earth.
She knelt beside the first.
Two fingers to the neck.
No pulse.
The second.
Cold. Rigor is already setting in.
She moved from one to the next, methodical, precise across torn armor and broken weapons.
[???]: Most casualties died from deep lacerations or exsanguination. Two from ballistic trauma to vital organs. One—decapitation.
No judgment. No grief. Just facts.
Then—
A pulse.
Weak. Thready. Present.
She knelt immediately.
The man's abdomen was torn open, shrapnel having ripped through muscle and flesh. Loops of intestine had spilled free, slick with blood and ash. His breathing was shallow, each rise of his chest uneven, wet. Shock had already begun to take him; his skin was pale beneath the grime, pulse weak and erratic beneath her fingers.
Normally, this was impossible. Lethal. Beyond help.
Her hands moved anyway.
She did not hesitate.
[???]: Stay conscious, you are not permitted to die yet.
The medical kit was at her side in an instant. The interior lights flared to life as she opened it, casting a sterile white glow over the ruin-stained ground. Her movements were precise, stripped of panic or mercy—only procedure remained.
First: bleeding control.
She pressed down hard, steady pressure, palm braced against torn flesh until the bleeding slowed from a torrent to a stubborn flow. With her other hand, she tore open a bottle of medical alcohol, the sharp scent cutting through smoke and rot. She poured it generously over her gloves, then over the wound.
The man gasped, a raw sound clawing out of his throat.
"Stay still," she said quietly. Not comfort. Instruction.
Alcohol burned away filth, ash, and blood alike. She flushed the wound, teeth clenched as the heat from her body instinctively tried to rise—she forced it down. Too much warmth would cook what little life he had left.
Next: reposition.
With careful, practiced motions, she guided the exposed intestines back into place, hands steady despite the tremor in the man's breathing. No wasted movement. No hesitation. Every second mattered.
Sutures came next.
Needle. Thread. Entry. Pull. Tie.
Again.
And again.
She closed muscle first, stitching torn tissue together with clinical efficiency, then skin, drawing ragged edges into a fragile line of survival. Blood soaked the gauze she packed against the wound, but it slowed—enough.
She worked until her fingers were slick and aching, until the man's breathing steadied into something resembling a rhythm. When she finished, she secured the bandages, tight but not crushing, and finally stepped back.
Alive.
For now.
She exhaled, a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
Around them, the battlefield remained silent—red sky, broken bodies, and the distant echo of a war that did not care.
She wiped her hands clean with alcohol once more and stood.
Her oath still held.
[???- Somewhere]
[Mercenary 1#]: Hay, boss, are you leaving?
The tall man with the shield looked at his team and walked away.
[???]: Go meet up with Hoederer tell him I sent you.
[chapter end]