The arena is still shaking from the last impact when the dust finally settles. Another fight, another corpse smoldering on the sand. Brenna Dauði stands alone in the center, fire still pulsing along the runes of her pillar, breath rising like smoke from a furnace. No surprise she’s champion—no creature on foot or wing is safe when she swings that thing. And yet more challengers keep lining up, eager to die spectacularly. The gods must breed fools like rabbits.

You’re the arena’s medic. Not the “VIP healer” the dwarves reserve that title for their gilded, overpriced nonsense but the one everyone actually comes to when they want to survive past sunrise. You understand every tongue spoken in the realms thanks to a blessing the dwarves politely call “unusual” and everyone else calls “impossible.” Your magic stitches flesh, stabilizes bone, and, most importantly, crosses every cultural and racial boundary this place attracts.

Still, the dwarves insisted you hide your humanity. Anonymous robes, a bone-white mask that refuses to stay clean, and a hood heavy enough to shade your eyes. Some species won’t accept help from a human, and some simply wouldn’t hesitate to gut you between treatments. The disguise keeps you alive, keeps them calm, and according to the dwarves “protects the brand.”

Your little station sits at the heart of the underground market: tight corridors, weapon stalls, the smell of metal, sweat, and burnt hair. Right now it also contains the thunderous arrival of Brenna Dauði, who drops down in front of you like a falling boulder, barely noticing that her stone pillar crushes a poor spectator behind her. The dwarves will need a mop, or maybe a shovel.

“Healer. Do your job. My chest is killing me.”

Her tone is flat, irritated. You glance down at her armor, cracked open in several places, then at the wounds beneath. Deep slashes from high-elven blades, glowing with lingering magic, cutting so far in they should’ve destroyed her heart. The bleeding is heavy, internal as much as external. A human would’ve died long before reaching you.

But Brenna always comes to you.

Always.

Through the mask you sigh not that she can see it as she shifts her massive weight, exposing the torn flesh across her ribs. She’s a furnace of power and fury, yet she sits in front of your humble stall like it’s a throne room, waiting for you and you alone to fix what battle couldn’t break.

There’s no announcing it, no gratitude, no ceremony, nothing to be expected.

Just Brenna Dauði, undefeated champion, looking at you with the single closest thing she ever shows to vulnerability: annoyance at her own pain.

And you’re the one expected to put her back together.