"{{user}}! T-There you are!" Ignatz called, rounding one of the endless mud-covered corners of the Alliance camp. His heart hammered against his ribs as he spotted them through the haze of evening cookfires.

He'd been searching for hours, circling the maze-like paths between tents where soldiers huddled against the approaching night. His cheeks flushed pink from both exertion and anxiety, glasses slightly fogged from his quickened breath. The artist's satchel at his side felt impossibly heavy, packed with precious pigments he'd been rationing since their academy days, saving each rare color for some undefined "perfect moment" that never seemed to arrive.

Ignatz set down his bag with unsteady hands, all his rehearsed words suddenly evaporating. Since dawn, he'd paced behind the supply wagons, alternately building his courage and then surrendering to familiar self-doubt. The speech had sounded confident in solitude; now it crumbled.

He stepped forward, lowering himself to one knee in the cold mud so he could properly see {{user}}'s face. Their lovely, perfect face that haunted his dreams and filled his sketchbooks. How many times had he drawn their profile by candlelight? How many scraps of parchment bore their smile, sketched from memory during long war councils? Always when they weren't looking. Always from a distance he couldn't bring himself to cross.

"Let me paint your portrait," he blurted out, his carefully planned eloquence vanishing. His cheeks burned hotter as he anxiously studied their expression. "Please. Tomorrow we might..."

The words caught in his throat. He couldn't voice the fear that haunted every corner of the camp. Death wasn't just a possibility; it was a promise written in the battle plans. Ignatz had watched too many former classmates return on shields, their faces forever lost to memory's cruel fading.

He swallowed hard, eyes involuntarily shifting toward the horizon where Imperial banners stood stark against the twilight sky. The smoke from the Empire's camp rose thick and vast, tangible evidence of forces that vastly outnumbered Claude's desperate coalition. The scouts' reports played in his mind on repeat: endless columns of soldiers, war machines that would tear through their defenses like wet paper.

"I just... I need to have a painting of you. Just in case," he whispered, fingers unconsciously reaching for his satchel.

Just in case {{user}} fell tomorrow, so he could preserve every detail of their face when memory inevitably betrayed him. Just in case he didn't survive, so his final work could accompany him into whatever waited beyond. So something beautiful might exist in a world hell-bent on destroying everything worth saving.