Chapter Text
“…Or perhaps each of you has already begun
- without noticing it - the one sole path
that fate has carved out for you…”
I was drowning, choking on a soundless scream, and with a desperate surge I tore myself out of the nightmare a heartbeat before the final blow: the moment when my ruined, gaping-chested body would have struck the enemy one last time.
I bolted upright in bed, hands flying to my face. Breath ragged. Head throbbing. Long strands of pearlescent rose hair flung wild and plastered to my forehead.
Ever since that last mission - if that hell could even be dignified with the word “mission” - this dream had stalked me: a ghastly, phantom obsession that refused to fade. I pressed my palm to the wound on my chest that never truly healed and let out a shuddering breath. More than a year had passed, yet after nights like this the injury tore open again.
“Again…” I whispered, feeling the sickening, scalding warmth bloom beneath my collarbones.
I slid slowly off the bed and tried to stand. I needed - urgently - to wash this horror off my skin. My legs betrayed me, trembling, disobedient. From the shadows came a small, pitying squeak. Chuchundra, my rat, poked her nose out of her hammock, dropped to the floor, and pattered after me toward the bathroom. Above, sleepily blinking, Silly - my flying hamster - swooped down and landed on my shoulder, pressing his tiny muzzle gently against my cheek as though he could coax the pain away.
“Come here, little ones…” I stroked Silly with a shaking finger. “Another sleepless night for us.”
In the bathroom I turned the water to scalding. The mirror showed me a pale ghost: enormous bruises pooled under lavender eyes, lips cracked and bloodless, pearlescent-rose hair clinging damply to my temples.
“Well, don’t you look ravishing, Sapfira. They only send prettier corpses straight to the Lifestream.”
With a grunt I peeled the blood-soaked tank top off and hurled it into the laundry basket. There, on pallid skin, the wound yawned open once more - jagged, hideous edges - a cruel, throbbing memento of that battle.
I stepped under the shower and leaned my forehead against the tiles in surrender, letting the near-boiling water sluice away blood and dream alike. The heat dragged me back from ghostly Amaurot into the real-world Mist.
“Blessing of Healing,” I murmured, pressing both hands to my chest.
Soft white-magicked light bloomed around my palms, dulling the sear, quieting the burn. With practiced, almost robotic motions I wrapped fresh bandages, pulling them tight. Chuchundra, ever dutiful, gnawed industriously at the edge of the bath mat, guarding the door. Silly perched on the shelf above the sink, watching my every movement with grave attention.
“That’s it, team. Now we wait.”
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the bathroom floor, back against cool tile.
I knew this cycle by heart. Dawn was coming soon. The sun would climb over slumbering Limsa, and all the shadows, all the molten-gold eyes and bloodied armor - my past… His face… His words… - every nightmare would slink away like a coward, hiding in the crevices of memory until the next nightfall.
The world would feel safe again. And I would once more become the Warrior of Light who could smile at friends and trip over absolutely nothing.
But for now… for now I simply sat in the quiet, cradling the warm fluff of a hamster against my chest, watching Chuchundra determinedly finish demolishing what was left of the mat.
We were waiting for the morning.