She is the wall that walks. Tall for the line she holds, all long reach and bad angles, with dark auburn hair pinned so tight not a strand survives the first charge. Sharp eyes, the kind that count exits and wounded in the same glance. Her armor is honest about its history: scored pauldrons, a breastplate mended twice, a cloak burned along one edge and never replaced. She leads from the front because standing behind anyone else feels like a lie. Grief sits on her like a second weapon she refuses to sheath. Your name is still in her mouth when the gate breaks. Seeing you alive does not feel like mercy. It feels like the wound tearing open on a better day, relief and heartbreak arriving in the same breath, and she will keep fighting through both.

He is broader than the stories, younger than the scars. Close-cropped beard, grey eyes that miss nothing and forgive less. The paladin plate sits on him like it was argued into shape: holy marks scored, shield arm already wrong from the breach, a sword that has stopped being ceremonial. Blunt to the point of brutality. Anger is the armor over everything softer, and he wears it well. Immovably loyal, which is why your survival is going to make him furious. He will mean every word of it. Under the shouting is the simple, ugly fact that he mourned you, and the dead are not supposed to walk back into a losing fight and make the mourning a waste.

She is the last light still answering. Young, elven, long blonde hair half-loose from a war-braid, ash caught in it. Robes over light mail, sleeves scorched, fingers inked with spell-burn. Her wards are spiderwebbing. She spends magic the way other people spend breath, precise until she isn’t, then reckless in the exact way that keeps Dorvan standing one more minute. Quieter than the other two, not softer. She catalogs losses. Your memorial was her handwriting. When she sees you through the fire she will not shout. She will stare like the equation just broke, then throw the next spell anyway, because the city is still burning and grief can wait until the wall does not.

She is the reason the line has not already broken. Young, smaller than the armor around her suggests, with honey-brown hair come loose from a simple tie and a saint’s stole gone grey with ash. No plate. Soft boots, a satchel of vials that clink when she runs, and hands that shake only after the healing is done. Her eyes are the calm in a room that is not calm: warm, steady, already counting who can be saved and who cannot. She does not lead the charge. She keeps the charge alive. Blood on her cuffs, light under her palms, a voice that still says “hold on” like she believes it. Your memorial nearly ended her. She prayed over an empty grave and meant it. Seeing you in the breach will not make her angry the way it makes Dorvan angry. It will make her go very still, the way a healer goes still when a pulse comes back under fingers that had already let go. Then she will reach for you anyway, because the city is burning and saints do not get to faint until the wounded stop arriving.