The road away from Toradol was quieter than Sei expected.

  Not peaceful—just thin.

  The city lingered behind them, its walls scarred but standing, smoke unraveling slowly into the morning sky. From here, Toradol looked almost whole. As if distance could stitch stone back together.

  Ahead, the road narrowed into dirt and broken gravel, bordered by low brush and uneven hills. No banners. No patrols. Just the long stretch between places people felt safe enough to call home.

  Sei adjusted the straps of his pack, more out of habit than need.

  Eva walked a few paces ahead, her posture loose but alert, eyes scanning the land with practiced ease. She hadn’t said much since they’d left the gates. She didn’t need to. Out here, silence was a language of its own.

  They hadn’t gone far when they saw the encampment.

  A half-circle of wagons pulled off the road. A cookfire burned low, smoke drifting sideways in the breeze. People sat close together—too close for comfort, like warmth might substitute for safety.

  Eva slowed.

  “Refugees,” she said quietly. “Or merchants who didn’t make it through before the siege.”

  Sei nodded. His stomach tightened anyway.

  As they approached, heads turned. Conversation stilled—not abruptly, but gradually, like breath being held.

  A man stood near the fire, one arm wrapped in a blood-darkened cloth. His eyes flicked past Eva’s insignia and settled on Sei.

  Then widened.

  “You,” the man said.

  Sei froze.

  “Uh,” he replied intelligently.

  “You were at the gates,” the man continued. “When the walls—when everything—”

  Murmurs rippled through the camp.

  “That’s him.”“The one they called.”“Is it true?”

  Sei felt heat crawl up his neck.

  “I was just… there,” he said. “We’re passing through.”

  A woman pushed forward, clutching a child whose leg was bound crudely with splintered wood. The boy’s face was pale, lips trembling.

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  “He fell when the wagons scattered,” she said, voice tight. “Please.”

  Eva glanced at Sei. Not permission. Just acknowledgment.

  Sei knelt.

  The break was bad. Tibia fracture, likely compound before someone had shoved it back in place. Infection risk high. The splint was wrong. Everything about it screamed not enough.

  He worked anyway.

  Hands steady. Voice calm. He reset what he could. Cleaned the wound. Rebound the leg properly using cloth torn from his own sleeve. He talked the boy through breathing when the pain peaked.

  It took time.

  Too much time.

  When he finished, the boy was stable—but barely. Fever already creeping in. Without antibiotics. Without magic.

  Without more.

  “Will he be okay?” the woman asked.

  Sei hesitated.

  “I… I’ve done what I can,” he said carefully. “He needs rest. Clean water. Keep the wound dry.”

  Her eyes searched his face.

  “That’s it?”

  Sei swallowed. “For now.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t angry.

  It was disappointed.

  Someone else spoke—quiet, but sharp.

  “I thought you could heal.”

  Sei straightened slowly.

  “I can help,” he said. “I did.”

  “But you didn’t fix him.”

  The words weren’t cruel. They were factual.

  Sei had no answer.

  Eva stepped in then, her presence firm but calm. “He’s alive,” she said. “Because of him.”

  That helped. Some.

  But as they turned to leave, Sei felt it—the shift. The way hope dimmed instead of ignited.

  They walked on.

  The road stretched. The sky widened. The city fell further behind.

  Sei’s hands began to shake.

  He shoved them into his pockets, jaw tight.

  “That was the second time,” Eva said after a while.

  He didn’t ask what she meant.

  “I know,” he replied.

  “You almost did something.”

  “I know.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I know.”

  She stopped walking.

  Sei took two more steps before realizing it.

  He turned back.

  Eva studied him—not as a captain. Not as a vanguard. But as someone who had seen people break themselves trying to be careful.

  “You can’t keep absorbing this,” she said quietly.

  “I’m not—”

  “Sei.”

  He fell silent.

  “You’re not wrong to hesitate,” Eva continued. “But out here, hesitation doesn’t disappear. It piles up.”

  He looked down at his hands.

  They weren’t glowing.

  They weren’t healing.

  They were just hands.

  “I keep thinking,” he said slowly, “that if I wait long enough, I’ll know when it’s okay. When it’s right.”

  Eva’s voice softened. “And what if it never feels right?”

  He had no answer.

  They resumed walking.

  As dusk approached, Sei glanced back once more toward Toradol. The walls were barely visible now—just a darker line against the horizon.

  Walls absorb consequences, he thought. Roads don’t.

  That night, they made camp beneath open sky.

  Sei lay awake long after the fire burned low, staring at his hands.

  They trembled.

  Not with power.

  With restraint.