[???]
("I will end this... right here... and right now...") Fiona's decided. ("With all this accumulated mana surging through every vein in my body...")
Her entire form trembled from the pressure of mana around her. She could not afford to draw this out any longer. Not when the others were still fighting. Not when defeat would mean more than just personal failure.
She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, letting herself sink into the silence between breaths. Memories began to rise—half-formed ghosts of a past she had tried so long to bury. The scent of melting steel. The sound of laughter, cut off too soon. The distant cry of a younger self. She clenched her teeth. No.
Not now.
She exhaled through her nose and with that single breath she buried the past again—deeper this time. Not erased, more so entombed. Her past had no place here. This battlefield—the now—was sacred ground. Only clarity, resolve, and forward motion had any right to remain.
