The time had flowed like thick, black sap.

The night had deepened, swallowing the edges of the camp, leaving only the orange circles of the fires and the groans of the forest. Inside the small tent, the air was heavy with humidity, sweat, and a silence of a very particular kind: the silence of a vigil.

Élisa sat on a low stool, her back aching, her eyes fixed on Maggie. She no longer watched only the flutter of her eyelids; she was listening for the fragile rhythm of her breathing, the faint twitch of a finger, the tiny movement of her parched lips. The flame of a candle set directly on the ground cast shifting shadows across the pale face of the wounded woman, sculpting a morphology of suffering and fragile resistance.

Her own hands, resting on her knees, were streaked with dirt and a fine layer of dried sweat. She still felt the weight of the gazes she had crossed when leaving Tonar's tent: a mixture of incomprehension, budding hope, and challenge. She had spoken—not with grand words, but with gestures. She had organized the chaos of the wounded, appointed helpers among those still able to stand, circulated water and clean bandages with a firmness that had surprised even herself.

But here, in the suffocating sanctuary of this tent, all certainty melted away. What remained was only the raw truth of life clinging on.

Suddenly, a harsh breath, different from the others. A short gasp.

Maggie's eyelids fluttered, slow, laborious, as though glued shut by pus and fever. Her glassy eyes, veiled with pain, wandered for a moment through emptiness before settling, with difficulty, on Élisa's face.

Silence stretched on, broken only by the crackling of the candle.

Then, a murmur, so faint it almost blended with the rustle of the canvas:

"… you're still here."

It wasn't a question. It was a weary statement, heavy with incredulous resignation.

Élisa didn't move. A cold wave ran down her spine. She had imagined this moment, had prepared herself for questions about the pain, about the others, about the situation. But not for this disarming simplicity.

"Yes," she breathed, her voice rougher than she expected.

Maggie's fingers trembled on the worn blanket. Her gaze seemed to struggle to focus, pushing back the haze.

"They… they look at you differently," she whispered again, each word a monumental effort. "The way they look at Tonar."

Élisa's heart stumbled unevenly in her chest. The observation, born from the depths of pain, was frighteningly accurate.

"Tonar gave me a task," she said simply, avoiding the word leader. It was too big, too heavy for this tent, for this broken woman.

A tremor passed across Maggie's cracked lips. It could have been the start of a smile—or just another grimace of pain.

"Good." The word was exhaled like a last breath. Her eyelids fell shut, heavy, as if that small exchange had drained her final strength. Her breathing steadied, deeper, sliding once again into unconsciousness.

But before slipping away completely, she whispered, so faintly Élisa had to lean close to hear it:

"… then make them afraid."

Then nothing. Only breath and silence.

Élisa remained frozen, eyes wide, the words echoing in the void of the tent. Make them afraid. It wasn't encouragement. It was an order. The last order of a warrior who perhaps felt the end drawing near, delivered in a whisper to the one keeping vigil.

The icy fear was still there, crouched in the shadows. But something else had taken root, fed by that breath, by that murmured challenge. Something hard, something determined.

She didn't move from her place, her vigil resuming—more intense, more relentless. She wasn't just waiting for a sign of life anymore.

She was standing guard.

---

Élisa took her time. The silence was so thick she could actually hear the dull thump of her own heart, a frantic drum against her ribs. The question had slipped out of her, a fragile attempt to break the weight of the vigil.

"How do you feel?"

Time stretched on again before the answer came, labored, as though dredged from the depths of a well.

"Chaos." Maggie's voice was a ragged thread, worn thin. "I feel like a chaos I can't describe."

Élisa raised an eyebrow, trying to inject a note of levity she was far from feeling. "Oh really? Rebellious as you are, you'll be back on your feet in a few days, won't you?"

Silence. Then a strange sound, halfway between a laugh and a choking sob. "I don't think so." Maggie's voice turned more nervous, sharper, laced with a creeping panic. "I can't feel my spiritual core anymore."

The words dropped into the tent like stones.

Élisa felt the ground slip away beneath her. This wasn't a physical wound. It was far worse. The spiritual core—the source, the inner forge from which strength, will, the very essence of their being was drawn. To feel it was like feeling one's own heartbeat. To lose it was to become an empty shell.

Maggie stared at the roof of the tent, her eyes wide with a terror so raw it was new even to her. "It's… the void. A great, black cold. I keep searching, and there's nothing. Nothing at all."

Without thinking, Élisa grabbed her hand. The skin was clammy, cold. She held on tight, as if she could anchor her back to reality, to the tent, to herself.

"You're in shock from the pain, from the fever," she said, trying to make her voice firm, though it trembled despite her. "Your body is broken, Maggie. It's tricking your mind."

"No." The whisper was categorical, desperate. "It's different. It's like I literally blew my soul apart."

Élisa leaned in, forcing Maggie to meet her eyes. In the candlelight, her face must have been nothing but shadow and steel.

She stayed silent a moment, frozen, as if Maggie's words had scorched the very air. Now she understood: it wasn't just fatigue, or fever, or even the visible wounds. It was far deeper.

Her gaze darkened. Yes, she knew this technique. They had used it before, several times. A double-edged weapon: burning a fraction of one's spiritual core to multiply strength for a breath, for a handful of minutes. But never… never had it left Maggie like this—broken from the inside, hollowed out to the marrow.

She inhaled slowly, squeezing her friend's hand tighter, as if she could stop her essence from unraveling further.

"I made a mistake."

Maggie's voice was that of a confession, fragile, unguarded.

Élisa frowned, leaning closer, a silent sign that she was listening, that Maggie had to finish.

"The ten minutes were already up," Maggie went on, each word heavy as shattered glass. "And I didn't want my paralyzed body to be a burden to you. So I blew my essence inside my core one more time."

Élisa's heart clenched at the thought.

"It was… a feeling I can't describe in simple words," Maggie continued, her glassy eyes fixed on some invisible ceiling. "Only that in that moment, I felt myself boiling with power. As if… as if I was bigger than my own body."

Her tone carried both a glimmer of awe and the mourning of something lost forever.

Élisa swallowed. A bitter taste rose in her mouth, a mix of worry and restrained anger. At last, she forced out, in a low, almost broken voice:

"But at what cost?"

Her question wasn't looking for an immediate answer. It resonated in the tent like an accusation against fate itself, against their world where every victory demanded a piece of flesh, of soul, or of future.

Maggie turned her eyes away, unable to withstand that gaze. Her lips trembled, but no words came.

Finally, Maggie spoke without even looking back, her voice worn by the effort and the truth it carried.

"I didn't do it to save everyone else. They wouldn't have done it for me if I were in their place. I did it for me. Because me, alive, I couldn't live knowing you hadn't survived. I lost a lot for that."

The words fell into the damp air, heavy with a terrible, absolute selfishness.

Élisa clenched her teeth, a cold fury biting into her gut. "And you think I can live with the fact that you literally sacrificed yourself just to keep me alive?" Her voice was a low knife, honed by the horror of the burden being thrust upon her.

Maggie finally turned her gaze, fixing Élisa with pleading eyes, fever-bright and desperate.

"Lise, let me be selfish just this once."

Élisa pulled her hand free from Maggie's. Not violently, but not gently either. A sharp, definitive gesture. She nodded, a slow movement heavy with bitter understanding.

"Selfish?" she repeated, and a laugh without joy, closer to a rasp, slipped from her lips. "You've always been selfish, Mag. From the start. Your heroism, your rebellion… it was always for you. For your own code, your own salvation. Never for the others."

She rose, towering over the broken figure sprawled on the mat. The shadow she cast on the canvas walls suddenly seemed immense, menacing.

"You carved a void in yourself just so you wouldn't have to live with my absence. But that void, now—it's me who has to carry it. You've been selfish to the very end. And me… I'm the one who has to live with it."

She stepped back, her gaze hardened, reshaped by the cruelty of this revelation. The watcher was no longer a friend. She was a living debt, a wound that would never heal.

"So rest, Maggie. Enjoy your selfishness. Maybe it saved us. But it also broke us."

With those words, she turned on her heel and left the tent, leaving behind silence, the stench of sickness, and the crushing weight of a sacrifice that perhaps had never truly been one.

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