The soldiers who'd given her the name "Sykepleier" were the same ones who marched with her into the Obsidian Sanctum. They told her it couldn't be done. Not with all three drakes still circling overhead. No one had survived that.
Mei Lin looked at the people around her. The priestess. The paladin. The rogue. The warrior. Her people. The ones she'd mended a hundred times before.
She grinned and said: "So... who wants to live forever?"
Then the drakes descended and the world caught fire.
Mei Lin slammed her totems into the obsidian stone and called the lightning down. Screaming white arcs tore across the dragonkin, leaping from one to the next to the next. Lava hammered into Sartharion's scales again and again. Her fire elemental erupted from the cracked earth, raging beside her. The air tasted like thunder. The ground ran with molten rock.
But it wasn't enough. The sky burned and the dragonfire kept coming. It caught her side, tearing through armor into fur.
Her water totem pulsed beneath her, spirits rushing to the wound, keeping her standing, keeping her whole just long enough.
Between every blast her hands flickered blue. Healing rain on whoever was still breathing. A riptide on the warrior barely holding the line. Lightning with her right hand, mending with her left. Both at the same time. Both because she had to.
She saw the priestess fall and screamed her name. Reached for the water spirits but they were already stretched thin. The paladin caught a blast meant for someone else and went down with his shield still raised. The rogue never even saw it coming. Too fast. Too much fire. She couldn't reach them all.
Mei Lin made a choice.
She stopped fighting Sartharion. She turned her back on the black dragon and ran to her people instead. Totems slammed into the ground around the fallen, water spirits pouring out in every direction. She grabbed the warrior by his armor and hauled him behind the ridge. Went back for the priestess. Back again for the rogue. Dragonfire scorching the stone around her, her totem burning through everything it had left just to keep her moving.
The paladin, barely conscious, dragged himself the last few feet. The ones who could still walk carried the ones who couldn't.
Behind the ridge, they were broken. Half of them weren't breathing. The rest were bleeding, shaking, staring at the obsidian wall with the look of people ready to run.
Mei Lin looked at them. Looked at the fallen.
She thought of her grandmother. A full day spent in silence before the old spiritwalker would speak of the most sacred thing she knew.
"You do not demand. You do not command. You kneel, and you ask."
Mei Lin knelt. She pressed her hands to the scorched stone, closed her eyes, and reached past the living waters, past the pain, past everything she had left. Into the silence where the ancestors wait. She asked them to give back what the fire had taken. Not one. All of them.
Ancestral Vision.
Mist rose from the stone around her, swirling outward, finding the fallen one by one. The priestess drew breath. The paladin's eyes snapped open. The rogue coughed, gasped, grabbed at the ground. One by one, hearts beating where hearts had stopped.
Every single one of them stood back up.
They stared at her. Alive, but afraid. Sartharion was still out there. Still raging. They could hear him beyond the ridge.
Mei Lin was burned. Bleeding. Her hands were shaking. Her water totem had nothing left to give. She could barely stand.
She stood anyway.
She slammed her totems into the obsidian stone one more time. Looked every one of them in the eye. And roared for Heroism.
It hit them like a second heartbeat. Every muscle surging, every breath deepening, every doubt burning away in a wave of fire and fury that started in Mei Lin's chest and poured through every ally standing around her.
The priestess gripped her staff, tears still wet on her face, and stepped forward. The paladin raised his shield with an arm that had been limp moments ago. The rogue spun her blades and whispered something that might have been a prayer. The warrior looked at Mei Lin, nodded once, and roared.
They charged back in. Together.
Mei Lin ran with them. She rose into Ascendance, pure lightning given form, and let go of everything she had left. Her fire elemental erupted again at her side. Lightning screamed from her hands, arcing across everything in her path. Lava poured into Sartharion's scales. The air tasted like thunder and the ground shook and this time, this time, they did not break.
When the black dragon finally fell, the silence came. The kind that only follows a storm. No one moved. No one spoke.
Mei Lin's legs gave out first. She knelt in the ash. Burned. Bleeding. Shaking.
The priestess sat down beside her. The paladin lowered his shield and just breathed. The rogue leaned against a rock and stared at nothing. The warrior put a hand on Mei Lin's shoulder and didn't say a word.
They sat together in the silence for a long time.
Someone eventually asked how she survived a night like that.
Mei Lin looked up through the soot and smoke, grinned, and said: "I've seen darker."
They gave her the title that night. {important}Of the Nightfall.{/important}
She doesn't talk about what it cost. She just knows everyone walked out alive. Every single one of them. That was enough.