The road east of Toradol smelled wrong.

  Smoke, yes—but beneath it, something coppery. Wet. Recent.

  Sei noticed it before anyone else did, and he hated that his body cataloged it automatically. Burned wood. Blood. Fear carried on heat currents that hadn’t cooled yet.

  “Village is close,” one of the guards said.

  Too close.

  They broke into a run.

  What they found wasn’t a battlefield.

  It was aftermath.

  Houses half-standing, doors torn from hinges. Livestock dead where they’d been penned. People moving in frantic, uncoordinated bursts—dragging the wounded, shouting names, crying out when no one answered back.

  A child screamed.

  Sei didn’t think. He moved.

  “Kneel,” he said to a man clutching his abdomen. “Pressure here. Don’t let go.”“You—please—”“I know,” Sei said, already gone.

  His hands were steady.

  That scared him.

  They came from the tree line while Sei was binding a shattered arm.

  Three of them.

  Not monsters. Not beasts.

  Men.

  Bandits, maybe. Raiders. Whatever word made it easier to sleep later.

  They moved fast, desperate. One of them already bleeding. Another with wild eyes and a blade too long for close quarters.

  “Back!” a guard shouted.

  The men didn’t listen.

  They never do.

  Sei stood between them and the wounded without realizing it.

  “Don’t,” he said, palms raised. “There are injured. Take what you want and go.”

  One of the men laughed—high, cracked. “Look at this one,” he sneered. “He thinks he’s important.”

  The blade came up.

  Time fractured.

  Sei felt the pull immediately—stronger than ever. The green warmth coiling up his arm, begging for shape. His fingers tingled, aligned, ready.

  He didn’t let it happen.

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  “Sei—!” Eva’s voice cut through the chaos.

  Too late.

  The bandit lunged past him, straight toward a woman shielding two children behind a broken cart.

  Sei turned.

  His hands didn’t respond.

  That cursed delay—just a fraction, just enough.

  The blade plunged.

  Eva moved like lightning, slamming into the attacker—but blood was already spreading across the woman’s side, dark and fast.

  She collapsed.

  The children screamed.

  Something inside Sei snapped—not loudly, not dramatically.

  Just… cleanly.

  He turned back to the bandit Eva was grappling with.

  And he stopped holding back.

  The green glow bloomed along his hand, shaping itself without instruction.

  A blade.

  Not long. Not cruel.

  Precise.

  The bandit froze when he saw it, eyes wide, mouth opening to speak—

  Sei stepped in and ended it.

  One motion.

  No anger.

  No hesitation.

  The body hit the ground already lifeless.

  Silence fell like a held breath finally released.

  Sei stood there, the glow fading as quickly as it had come, his hands suddenly empty.

  Normal.

  He stared at them.

  Someone retched behind him.

  Someone whispered a prayer.

  Eva didn’t look away.

  “Sei!”

  The scream tore through the moment.

  The woman.

  She was bleeding out—fast. The wound deep, ragged. Too much blood already lost.

  Sei dropped beside her.

  “No,” he whispered. “No, no—stay with me. Stay.”

  He pressed down, hands slick, mind racing. This wasn’t survivable. Not here. Not now.

  The green glow stirred again.

  He forced it down.

  “I won’t,” he said through clenched teeth. “I won’t take more.”

  The woman gasped, eyes unfocused.

  The children were crying—too loudly, too desperately.

  Something else answered.

  Not green.

  Warm.

  Soft.

  A light bloomed beneath his palms—golden, faint, pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat.

  Sei froze.

  “What—” he breathed.

  The light didn’t ask permission.

  It responded.

  Tissue knit beneath his hands—not fast, not miraculously—but deliberately. Bleeding slowed. Then stopped. The woman’s breath steadied, shallow but present.

  Sei’s arms trembled as if he’d run for miles.

  “Breathe,” he whispered. “Please. Just breathe.”

  She did.

  When the light faded, Sei collapsed backward onto the dirt, gasping, vision swimming.

  He felt hollow.

  Empty in a way killing hadn’t done.

  Eva was there instantly, gripping his shoulder to keep him upright.

  “You did it,” she said.

  Sei laughed weakly, hysterical. “I killed someone.”

  “And you saved someone,” Eva said.

  “That’s not—” His voice broke. “That’s not balance.”

  “No,” Eva agreed. “It’s responsibility.”

  Later, as the wounded were tended and the dead covered, Sei sat alone on a fallen beam, hands resting uselessly in his lap.

  They were steady again.

  Perfectly so.

  That frightened him most of all.

  He had killed.

  And the world hadn’t ended.

  Worse—it had needed him to do it.

  And when he’d refused to let death be the only answer—

  something inside him had answered anyway.

  Not as power.

  But as purpose.

  Sei closed his eyes, exhaustion dragging him under.

  Whatever he was becoming—

  he knew now.

  There was no path forward that didn’t cost something.