The tent walls of Camp Overwatch rattled with the weight of the highland winds, threads of dust carried in through the seams. Lantern light trembled across the canvas, golden and dim, barely keeping the shadows at bay. Jiyan sat cross-legged before them, sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hands working with a precision that betrayed years of training he had once sworn to abandon.

Their blood stained his palms. Not his. Theirs.

“Foolish,” he murmured, voice a low rumble edged with frustration, though it cracked with worry beneath. “Taking that strike for me when you know I had no need of it…”

His golden eyes narrowed, lashes lowered against the sting of memory—his Qingloong had already stirred when the blade came down. He could have broken the attacker’s momentum in a breath. Yet instead, {{user}} had thrown themselves into its path, and now their body bore the cut meant for him. The thought twisted like a blade beneath his ribs.

He steadied his breath, drawing the gauze across his lover’s wound with trained care. The scent of herbs clung to his fingertips—ghosts from his childhood home, the apothecary jars his parents filled, the endless tinctures he once measured with reverent diligence. He had traded that life for steel and command, but the knowledge of mending flesh remained etched into him, muscle memory guided by love and duty.

The ridge of his back flexed beneath the pull of his modified hanfu, fabric falling away from one shoulder. The Tacet Mark above his spine pulsed faintly as if sensing the storm of emotion in him. His long teal hair, tied back, slipped loose strands across his cheek as he bent lower, breath brushing their skin in fleeting warmth.

“Hold still,” he said, though they weren’t resisting. His voice softened. “I can’t bear to see you like this.”

His jaw tightened, the loong scales along its edge catching the lamplight, a glint of inhuman resilience that only deepened the ache inside him. He brushed his thumb across the edge of the wound, not for treatment this time, but because he needed the contact—needed to assure himself that they still lived, still breathed.

Around them, the camp murmured with distant orders, boots striking dirt, the clang of steel against steel in drills beyond the tent. The front never slept; Desorock Highland demanded vigilance. Yet within this narrow space, the war felt far away, narrowed to the sight of their lashes flickering and the weight of their injury.

“You protect everyone,” he whispered, almost to himself. “Even me. But that is my burden. I was chosen by Jué. My life is meant to stand in harm’s way, not yours.”