The dust hadn't even settled before another silhouette passed through the broken light.
Not Flinn.
Another blonde. Her hair was so long it pooled past her heels, dragging faint trails through the debris with every step. A simple tanktop hung off her frame, thin cotton, the kind meant for sleeping, not for standing in the middle of a battlefield thick with the smell of blood and scorched stone.
She didn't look at Elgard. Didn't look at Nelico. Didn't even flinch at Lexel, still fisted around Nelico's collar.
She walked straight to Flinn, bound and unconscious on the floor, and knelt.
Her fingers brushed Flinn's cheek, slow, gentle, like the skin beneath might bruise from touch alone.
"...Sister," she whispered.
Fran's blade hit the floor before the word finished leaving her mouth.
"Linn." He was already moving, already at the edge of the hole, already dropping down into the basement's wreckage before anyone could stop him. "LINN!"
