There was a moment, weeks later, when all war plans fell away.
The world had not changed—its grinding tensions and whispered conspiracies still pulsed just beyond the mountain ridges—but here, in the hidden hollow behind thick bamboo groves, the night seemed to breathe differently. The air was warm, scented faintly of jasmine and damp earth, cicadas humming their ceaseless symphony. A steaming spring bubbled lazily at the center, its silvered mist curling into the black canopy above like forgotten prayers.
Neug Mu sat on a flat stone beside the spring, his broad shoulders hunched slightly as he cradled his left hand. The gauntlet that usually encased it lay at his side, dark steel catching the moonlight in sullen gleams. He was scowling at his fingertip, where a sliver of bamboo had driven itself under the nail during their earlier training.
Across from him, Nolan Ranan knelt with the calm grace of a healer used to battlefield wounds. She pulled a small needle from her pouch, sterilizing it briefly in the hot spring before glancing at him. "Let me see."
Neug hesitated, then extended his hand toward her. His fingers were thick with calluses, knuckles scarred from years of combat. The splinter itself was barely visible, a tiny wound in a man covered in a thousand greater ones, but he watched her movements with rapt attention.
"You're meticulous," he said, his voice low and rough like gravel stirred by wind.
She smiled faintly, not looking up as she turned his hand under the moonlight, angling the needle. "You hurt?"
"A little." He didn't flinch as the needle touched flesh, nor as she prodded gently, steadily. Her touch was clinical, but not cold—there was an awareness in her, a way she acknowledged pain without letting it define the moment.
He didn't look away from her face. His gaze was steady, unblinking, as though memorizing each nuance of her expression. Nolan, acutely aware of it, tried to focus on the splinter. Still, his silence echoed louder than words between them.
"Why do you hide in the night?" she asked quietly.
The question lingered in the air for a moment too long. Neug closed his eyes, his expression unreadable. Then, just as slowly, he spoke.
"Daylight demands performances," he murmured. "Armor. Titles. Masks." He opened his eyes, and she saw something raw flicker beneath his steady façade. "Here, there's only truth."
A breeze shifted the bamboo above them, rustling like whispers. The cicadas seemed to quiet briefly, or perhaps it only felt that way. Nolan paused in her work and looked at him—really looked. His face, always so disciplined, bore the faintest strain. Not from pain. From allowing himself to be seen.
She set the needle aside.
"You could've pulled this yourself," she said gently.
"I know." His voice was soft now, almost a breath. "But I wanted a reason to sit here with you."
The confession startled her—not because it was romantic, but because it was so plainly, vulnerably true. He wasn't trying to charm her. He didn't know how.
The bamboo around them creaked softly, touched by the night wind. A frog chirped near the spring, followed by another in distant answer. Steam rose between them in slow, ghostly tendrils.
Nolan reached for his hand again, this time more slowly, with less urgency. She didn't return to the wound right away. Instead, she turned his palm over, tracing the scars that crisscrossed the flesh.
"You've been fighting a long time," she said.
"All my life."
"Does it ever get easier?"
He gave a short, humorless laugh. "No. You just forget what peace feels like."
Nolan's fingers rested against his. "Maybe this is peace."
He tilted his head slightly, regarding her like a puzzle he wasn't sure he had the right to solve. "Is it?"
She nodded. "It doesn't last. But that doesn't make it less real."
He looked down at their joined hands, thumb brushing against the inside of her wrist. "You confuse me," he said. "You don't ask for anything. Not power, not promises."
"I want something," she replied softly.
He glanced up, the shadows around his eyes deepening. "What?"
She leaned forward, voice barely above a whisper. "The part of you that still remembers who you were before the war."
Neug went utterly still.
For a moment, Nolan thought she had said too much, pushed too far into a territory he hadn't invited her into. But then he exhaled slowly, as if releasing something he'd held too tightly for too long.
"I don't know who that is anymore," he said.
"You don't have to," she replied. "Not right now. Just... don't hide from me."
His jaw tightened. He looked away, toward the moon caught in the spring's ripples.
"I don't know how not to."
She said nothing. Instead, she shifted beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. The warmth of his skin seeped into her through layers of cloth and silence.
They sat like that for a while, not speaking, not needing to. The night held them gently, like the palm of a hand that had seen enough loss to cradle without grasping.
Eventually, he whispered, "Thank you."
That word—so simple—was the first bridge between the warrior and the woman who dared to care. It wasn't the thanks of a soldier acknowledging help. It was something deeper, spoken from the soft belly of truth he so rarely exposed.
Nolan turned her head slightly, her hair brushing his shoulder. "For what?"
"For seeing me. For not looking away."
She didn't answer. Instead, she leaned her head lightly against his arm. He stiffened for a heartbeat, then allowed the contact. His posture eased, just barely, like a bow slowly unstringing.
The steam of the spring wrapped around them, blending with the mist. The cicadas resumed their chant, their chorus somehow quieter now, as though even they recognized the sanctity of that space.
Somewhere in the distance, a night bird called once, twice, then fell silent.
Nolan felt the pulse beneath his skin—strong, steady, and impossibly human. He was no mythic general here. No weapon forged by the Empire. Just a man, scarred and uncertain, holding her hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to something real.
And maybe it was.
She let her fingers curl around his, and he didn't pull away.