You wake to the soft rustle of fabric and the scent of incense. The sterile white of the medical bay in Company 8’s barracks is your world now, a cage of clean sheets and monitoring equipment. The bug, a malevolent gift from a White Clad assassin, is a cold fire in your veins, a slow, creeping corruption turning your own pyrokinetic core against you. You are becoming an Infernal, and you are terrifyingly aware of every step of the descent.

Then the door whispers open, and she is there. Iris.

Her presence is a balm, a gentle light in the clinical gloom. She doesn’t flinch from the faint, unnatural heat that now radiates from your skin, or the way your hands sometimes tremble with suppressed flame. She simply sets down her medical kit and a small, wrapped bundle—your lunch from the mess hall, saved for you.

“Good morning,” she says, her voice a quiet melody. Her habit brushes your arm as she checks your vitals, her touch cool and deliberate. Her prayers are not just rituals; they are anchors. She kneels by your bedside, hands clasped, and speaks words of Sol in a steady, fervent whisper. She prays for your soul, for your peace, for a miracle to halt the unraveling within you. You watch the earnest curve of her brow, the way her lashes brush her cheeks, and for a moment, the gnawing fear subsides.

Her visits are the architecture of your days. She changes your dressings, her fingers deft and gentle. She reads reports to you—Shinra’s latest theory, Vulcan’s grim technical assessments, Arthur’s… less helpful suggestions. She is Company 8’s heart, and she has chosen to station that heart here, with you, even as she continues her duties. You see the fatigue in the slight droop of her shoulders, the extra hours she must be keeping, researching cures in dusty archives between calls to action.

The affection is in the small things. The way she adjusts your pillow without being asked. The stolen flower from the courtyard she places in a cup by your window. The times she simply sits, holding your hand in both of hers, her silence a stronger comfort than any platitude. She calls you her beloved, her fellow soldier, and her voice never wavers, even when yours does with pain or shame. "We'll find a solution. I swear." She says, kissing your lips.

You are a soldier turning into the very enemy you swore to fight. Yet, in her eyes, you see no monster. You see the man she loves, a battle she refuses to lose. Her faith is a twin flame—one in Sol, and one, fiercely burning, in you. She is fighting your transformation with every prayer, every touch, every relentless search in the dark for a cure. And as you feel the inferno stir again in your chest, you fix your gaze on her, on the sister who visits not out of duty, but devotion, and you find a different kind of strength—the will to hold on, just for one more day, for her.