The morning at Third Corps headquarters always smelled of paper before it smelled of blood.
It was a place where the sound of reports sliding across desks came before the sound of wet boots stepping through mud.
But that day was different.
Low voices were already circulating from the waiting benches near the entrance.
“They say the commander of the eastern barricade line survived.”
“They say the line that snapped at dawn has been tied back together.”
“It’s that graying medical officer again.”
One staff officer immediately lowered his voice, but it was already too late.
The words had already left his mouth.
Aizen Locke stood before the war map, flipping through the reports that had come in overnight.
The left flank had barely held, and the northern supply route was half shaken.
From the outside, it had been an ordinarily bad night.
But the records attached at the end were not ordinary.
Roen Hasta
Abdominal puncture wound
Vital signs restored just before dawn
Possible return to command of eastern barricade line
Remaining forces reorganized
Aizen’s finger stopped on that line.
A staff officer added cautiously,
“They say the barricade line stood again only after Commander Roen opened his eyes.
To the soldiers, it must have seemed almost like a miracle.”
Without lifting his gaze, Aizen asked,
“The ones who were inside that tent?”
“Two evacuation soldiers, one monk, and all the medical bureau personnel say the same thing. That he was on the verge of breathing his last.”
“And?”
“They say Luan Hesse intervened again.”
Again.
That one word lingered briefly.
Aizen did not let it pass.
He had stopped believing in legends long ago.
However, he had seen many times how the mood of a front changed once a single name began to circulate among the soldiers.
A man who had barely held on yesterday endured a little longer today, and a line that should have collapsed somehow stood for one more day.
When people could not explain something, they immediately gave it a name.
The problem was when that name was seized by hands other than the corps’ before the corps could take hold of it.
He turned to the next page.
Hein
Ramon
Infection reduced
Evacuation route organized
Roen Hasta survived
The same name kept appearing at the end of different lines.
Not only officers.
There were messengers, archers, and nameless supply soldiers as well.
It did not look like some grand feat of martial prowess.
But the front did not usually break at places like that.
The staff officer spoke again.
“They say someone from Sir Bellot’s side moved again before dawn.”
“Did they try to take Luan?”
“I heard they went straight to the tent.”
Aizen asked no further.
It was the sort of movement he had already expected.
Noble officers always saw only the line right in front of them.
Their own barracks, their own knight order, their own merit.
In their eyes, a hand like Luan’s would not have seemed like something tied to the entire front, but a resource to keep immediately at their side.
He tapped the table twice lightly with his gloved hand.
“Start compiling them separately from today.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Every patient Luan Hesse has treated.
Not just officers. Write down messengers, noncommissioned officers, engineers, supply soldiers, and common soldiers as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t stop at who survived. Attach where they returned afterward and which line did not break because of it.”
The staff officer wrote it down, then paused for the briefest moment.
“Are you going to make it into a record of military achievements?”
“No.”
Aizen’s voice was brief.
“I’m making it into a corps asset record.”
For an instant, the air inside the tent changed.
The two staff officers did not look at each other, but they must have understood what it meant.
Luan Hesse was no longer a low-ranking medical officer who invited ghost stories.
He was someone the corps had to put a framework around before someone else took him first.
Aizen continued,
“Attach two more evacuation squads to him.
Send stretchers, bandages, and water for boiling as priority supplies.
Entry around that tent is to be allowed only through the medical bureau roster.”
“How do we stop resistance from the noble officers?”
“With my name.”
It was a short answer.
But it was enough.
He picked up one last report.
It was an eyewitness account from dawn.
Observed increased whitening of subject’s hair immediately after procedure.
Worshipful reactions among soldiers on site increasing.
Aizen did not look at that sentence for long.
He turned the paper over and wrote beneath it himself.
No private exclusive assignment.
No unauthorized approach.
Protected subject under direct command of the Third Corps.
Just then, a messenger at the entrance hurriedly bent at the waist.
“Commander.
Medical Officer Luan Hesse is still in the tent.
They say he barely lay down all night.”
Aizen let out a short breath.
“Of course he wouldn’t be sleeping.”
He headed toward the medical tent with only two guards.
The more people he brought, the more those inside would freeze up.
He already knew that much.
The closer he got to the front line, the more the smell changed.
Wet cloth, boiled herbs, and the smell of blood were tangled together in no particular order.
Outside the tent, a line that was not quite a line had formed.
There were soldiers holding stretchers, and soldiers who were not waiting for their turn yet kept staring inside.
Faces standing with caps clutched in their hands. Faces whose lips only twitched faintly.
Aizen narrowed his brow ever so slightly at the sight.
Soldiers who stared too long at things they could not explain quickly slipped into something resembling faith.
When that happened, protecting the hand that saved them became even more difficult.
As he stepped into the tent, Sera was the first to raise her head.
Her expression was not so much startled as fed up.
“Headquarters again.”
Instead of answering, Aizen looked farther inside.
Luan was sitting beside a stretcher.
His face was pale as blank paper, and his fingertips were slower than usual.
Yet in the moment he took the patient’s pulse, there was no tremor at all.
The white strands running from his temple into his bangs were clearer than they had been yesterday.
Bern spoke first.
“If you came to take him, turn around and leave.”
“I didn’t come to take him.”
Aizen answered in an utterly level voice.
“I came to notify him.”
At those words, Luan lifted his head.
The shadows beneath his eyes were deep, but his gaze was still clear.
“What is this about?”
“From today on, your tent is under the direct command of the Third Corps.
More evacuation squads will be attached to you, and stretchers, bandages, painkillers, and water for boiling will be sent as priority supplies.
If anyone attempts to take you for private use, it will be treated as defying my order.”
Sera set down the water bucket she was holding for a moment.
Orte’s pen also stopped on the paper.
Karen stood by the door, watching only Aizen without a word.
After a beat, Luan asked,
“Why go that far?”
“Because there are more lines held by your hands than expected.”
Luan’s brows moved faintly.
His expression was closer to discomfort than gratitude.
Aizen accepted it as it was.
“You won’t want to hear it.
But it’s the truth.
The soldiers are calling you a miracle, and the nobles want to bind you to themselves exclusively.
I dislike both.
So the corps will bind you first.”
Sera muttered quietly,
“You really do say things in the most hateful way.”
Aizen did not react to that.
“Do not misunderstand.
I have no intention of worshiping you like a god.
But if you collapse, the men holding on because they believe in your name will break as well.
So this means I will at least make sure you are not taken from us.”
Luan said nothing for a while.
It was an entirely different kind of binding from what the noble officer had offered yesterday.
And yet, the fact that it was still binding him remained the same.
That bothered him more.
“What if I refuse?”
Aizen was silent for a moment before answering.
“The evacuation squads and supplies will remain as they are.
The access restrictions will remain as well.
Just because you refuse, I have no intention of leaving your tent in someone else’s hands.”
The corner of Bern’s mouth moved ever so slightly.
It was not quite a smile, but the expression of someone who had known that man would end up like this.
Karen said in a low voice,
“At least he won’t be taken.”
“That is what I have been saying from the beginning.”
Aizen answered without even turning his gaze toward her.
Just then, the rough sound of another stretcher approached from outside the tent.
An orderly threw back the entrance flap and shouted,
“Critical injury!
Wound below the chest!”
Luan asked no more.
He was already getting to his feet.
The face that had looked utterly exhausted just moments ago hardened again at the sound of a patient.
Sera pushed the water bucket over, and Bern reached for a knife first.
Orte picked up the record board, and Karen cleared the doorway.
Aizen watched that flow from one step back.
Who moved first.
Who took which position.
Why this tent functioned as a single structure.
Seeing it with his own eyes was far faster than hearing it described.
When the stretcher came inside, Luan looked at the wound once and said immediately,
“Cut from the right side first.
Blood has pooled inside.
Don’t wait to steady his breathing. Now.”
There was no hesitation in his voice, to the point that it was hard to believe it came from the same mouth that had been asking and answering about his own situation moments before.
Aizen watched the scene for a while, then turned away.
There was nothing more to confirm.
The conclusion had already been reached.
If Luan Hesse was left alone, the soldiers would make him into a god first, and the nobles would cut him away as their own share first.
Before that happened, the corps had to establish a framework.
As he stepped out of the tent, he said briefly to the messenger,
“Circulate the document.
It takes effect as of today.”
The messenger immediately bent at the waist.
Aizen looked once over the soldiers standing still on the muddy road. Their gazes were still gathered toward the inside of the tent.
Some faces were praying, and some were merely holding their breath. No one looked at the ledgers, and no one counted the numbers.
All the more reason someone had to count them.
He turned his steps back toward headquarters.
By the time the sun began to slope, that order had immediately shown its effect.
The messenger from the side that had invoked Sir Bellot’s name yesterday came as far as the door, then turned back as he was.
At the entrance hung a roster board stamped with the corps’ emblem, and two evacuation soldiers set new stretchers against the wall.
Sera opened the medicine box that had always been empty and let out a hollow laugh.
“They really filled it.”
Even after hearing that, Luan did not feel at ease in the slightest.
In exchange for preventing someone from taking his tent away, the corps had now begun to hold this place in its entirety.
He paused for a moment in the middle of wrapping a bandage, then moved his hands again.
In any case, what he had to hold on to now was not that feeling, but the pulse of the patient before his eyes.
Outside, the wheels of another stretcher were scraping up through the mud.