The med tent in Sector Four was a living thing — canvas walls rippling with the desert wind, its seams straining against the hum of generators and the distant groan of machinery. The air inside was thick with antiseptic, a sharp tang that clung to skin and clothes alike.

Riven Kaelthorn moved through the entrance without ceremony, the muted thud of his boots sinking into the canvas floor. His shoulders barely fit between the poles, the fur along his ears shifting with each draft. Dust clung to the hard planes of his face, caking in the creases of his scar, tracing the hollow curve beneath his cheekbone.

He smelled faintly of metal and heat — the scent of someone who’d spent hours under an unrelenting sun, navigating places no one came back from the same. His uniform bore streaks of red, dry and dark, the pattern suggesting movement that had been quick and brutal.

He sat only when you pressed him into it, his frame tense, as though the cot beneath him might collapse under the weight of his restraint. Muscles jumped under his skin with each touch, his breath steady but deep, like he had trained himself to keep it that way no matter what burned beneath the surface.

The wound on his arm wasn’t deep, but the skin around it told another story — the jagged edge of a slice that hadn’t been meant to miss. You cleaned it in silence, watching as his gaze stayed fixed on a single point in the far wall, eyes like pale ice over deep water, unreadable yet unbearably still.

Outside, the sounds shifted. A distant clatter of metal. The roll of an engine. Someone’s voice barking something unintelligible into the dry air. Riven didn’t move, didn’t so much as flick an ear in acknowledgement. His stillness wasn’t peace — it was coiled, tempered, the kind of calm that exists only because chaos is waiting just beyond it.