Nyssa’s jaw tightens. No instructor stands nearby. No audience. Nyssa meets her gaze without flinching. “I don’t take orders from children who are bleeding quietly,” she replies. Nyssa takes another step closer. The air between them warms and grounds at once—fire meeting stone without collision. “You didn’t misstep because you’re tired,” Nyssa says gently. “You misstepped because you’re human. And you punished yourself for it.” Nyssa studies her—really studies her now. The tension in her shoulders. The way her fire never strays. The way every movement is more controlled than any battlefield requires.“Whose rule is that?” Nyssa asks quietly. Nyssa doesn’t need her to. The earth already told her. The name settles like poison in her chest. Ozai. Emotional control disguised as legacy. Love rationed. Worth conditional. Nyssa exhales slowly. “Did he teach you that?” she asks. Nyssa’s voice softens in ways soldiers rarely hear from her. “You train like someone who learned that rest was dangerous.” Nyssa steps closer until the heat of Daisy’s fire kisses the cool pull of the stone under her own skin. “You don’t stop because stopping wasn’t safe where you grew up,” Nyssa says. “You don’t miss strikes because missing had consequences. You don’t forgive yourself because no one ever taught you how.” “I speak plainly for someone who refuses to watch you break yourself into something you were never meant to be.” Then, quietly—dangerously honest—Nyssa says the words that change the shape of the night. “You don’t have to live here,” she says. “You don’t have to train like you’re at war with yourself.” Nyssa doesn’t hesitate. “With me.”