Cor called her once again to tell her Gladio and his friends had safely arrived in Lestallum and were currently treated at the nearest infirmary. She ran outside at break neck speed before Cor even had the time to hang up.

The other patients seemed confused at the commotion, nurses running around, whispering in hurried voices. Iris caught a few "how is that even possible" and "how are they not dead" on her way to where her brother rested.

Their beds were in a quiet corner, if it weren't for the continuous buzzing of medics, separated from the other patients with partitions.

The doctor raised his head as he saw her approach.

"How are—"

"They should be fine, miss Amiticia." He cut in, stopping her advance. "You may see them if you wish to."

Iris shakily nodded, still nervous, expecting to suddenly find out they had died when the doctor had his back turned. The man led her inside and between the wall of medics, she saw them: Pale, caked with dirt and soot that had hurriedly wiped off, limbs wrapped in gauze. Ignis and her brother's injuries were hidden under all the bandages that mummified them. Prompto's hands were incased in plaster and propped up. And peeking from underneath the edges of their bandages was the angry swelling and contorted mess of burnt skin. But as ghastly they looked, they looked peaceful and not the kind that she saw on the dead, the face of someone peacefully dreaming. How could this even be?

"Burns all over their bodies, even though there was no obvious signs of such an intense fire on the scene we found them. Broken bones and torn ligaments in his case." the doctor pointed at Prompto. "Other than that, cuts and bruises on all of them but...Their wounds are already mending, and faster than normal at that. In fact they were healing even before they were brought in...almost as if something was protecting them..."

"Protecting them?"

The man hesitantly nodded after a moment of consideration and for a moment, the meticulous work of the nurses was the only sound they heard.

"I've seen people survive horrible injuries, even worse than this...but for them to survive like this, out in the open, unconscious, with open wounds...should be impossible"

Iris blankly stared at her brother's sleeping face, wondering what could have happened, what could have gone through her brother's head. Gladio was a calculating man, she knew he wouldn't try to enter Insomnia on a whim, she knew that much. Not only him, but the three of them. They all had been busy, trying to survive and rarely met with each other anymore. Why the sudden need the reunite and head for a suicide mission?

...Could it be?

She jumped at the hand on her shoulder.

"You can stay by his side if you wish."

The buzzing of medics eventually calmed down once the patients were declared stable. Iris was allowed to remain by her brother's side along with his wife, Monica, who arrived in a frenzy and who teared up the moment she saw her husband on the cot. The huntress was disheveled from rushing away from her station in Cleigne, and she still wa in her hunter gear. She bent over Gladio's side, assessing his state even after the doctor had briefed her. Monica briefly checked over the other two and she eventually slipped down on her chair, a bit more at ease, then lifted her eyes to Iris.

"I'm sorry", she said apologetically. "Hi, I hoped we wouldn't see each other again in such circumstances."

Iris shook her head. "No need to apologize. No one would have known this would've happened."

Monica nodded, tears welling up in her eyes again and they fell in a long silence, sparsely interrupting by a few short questions, asking how they've been and what they were going to do now that daylight had return. Time flowed slowly, the feeling amplified by the irritating ticking of a clock, which had been the only sound until a thundering crash broke the silence.

Both women jumped back to attention when the loud bang resounded at the entrance of the infirmary, followed by shouts and panicked voices. Monica got up before Iris had the time to, sticking her head out of the make-shift "room" her brother and his friends were kept in, still sleeping blissfully unaware. Though Ignis seemed to have jerked at a new loud yell before settling back into a relaxed state.

She heard Monica sigh as she trotted back to her chair once the commotion died down though there still was a flutter of feet in the distance.

"What was it?" asked Iris, chin planted in the thin mattress of her brother's bed.

"Some newbie hunters dragging their mentor in here. The guy looked completely out of his mind."

Iris blearily looked up at the clock 4pm. She had been sitting here for almost six hours already. Her bum hurt from keeping the same uncomfortable position on the very uncomfortable chair they gave her, but the grumbling of her stomach was even worse. She stood up and stretched.

"Going out, want me to get something to eat for you too?"

Monica nodded. "Anything will do."

So she ordered the simple soup for take-out from the nearest cantina, she didn't feel like bothering eating something fancy even though she well had enough funds to indulge herself. Hopefully something warm like this could brighten them up. But the meal was quickly forgotten once she stepped back into the room:

A movement, small, but just enough to catch her attention and Monica's. Ignis' hands had gripped his bed covers in a tight clutch, knuckles white. The bandages crinkled with his motions

Then a whimper escaped the injured man.

"Ignis?"

Monica rushed out of the room and Iris dropped the take-out bags at the feet of the bed, leaning over the advisor, observing him. He clearly was awake, even through the meds they had pumped in him, one milky eye open searching around the room for the minuscule specks of light he managed to see. There was another quiet whimper.

"Hey, hey don't move. You're safe now."

His lips moved, she did not hear his voice, but she read the single word upon his lips as clear as day.

Noct...

Her blood ran cold. So her suspicions had been right then. They hadn't entered Insomnia just the three of them...their old friends had been with them. After all these years...

She took a step back, reeling from what this could imply.

The doctor and a nurse appeared in her field of view and immediately started working on Ignis, pushing her out of the way.

So it had happened...this crazy Prophecy her brother had told her about. The blinding light in the sky had been caused by Noctis ascending to the Throne.

He had done it.

The swell of pride she felt was quickly squashed by worry. Why hadn't he come back with the others? Was there a reason for him to remain in Insomnia? She hoped so.

"Misses Amiticia?"

"H-huh?" She hadn't even noticed the doctor had been talking to her. They seemed to have been done checking on the worn out advisor who seemed to have succumbed to sleep once more, probably from the cocktail of pain meds and antibiotics in his system.

"Do allow yourself a moment of rest. They're in good hands and are on the way to a miraculous recovery. Please take a moment for yourselves.

Monica sighed and slowly walked out of the room, almost drunkenly in her walk. Iris followed after her, picking up the discarded meal on her way.

She made sure to take a good breath once she was outside. It was true, she could let herself become a jumbled mess of nerves before Gladio even woke up.

With the influx of refugees in the recent years, people had been working on shifts, in constant rotations. But with the arrival of the day, people have been trying to revert to their natural routines, with more or less success. Streets were crowded, people were fighting for any day job they could find.

Lestallum was slowly turning back into what it once was, brimming with life, though it was more populous than before. Makeshift houses sprouting in every place they could.

People were itching to go back to their old homes.

But even the loud hubbub was soothing to Iris, better than cold worried silence inside the infirmary. She found Monica sitting on the porch, head in her hands, silent. Profound exhaustion rolled off her in waves. She wasn't the only one, both women were emotionally spent. Iris sat beside her sister-in-law, handing her the soup she had ordered

"Sorry, it's a bit cold now."

Monica mutely thanked her, and took a sip, too numb to care about the temperature of her meal. They sighed, looking tiredly at the distant setting sun, blurred by the fog of the still dissipating photophilic particles.

"What were they thinking?"

"Ignis…" Iris bit her lip "has been asking for Noctis when he woke up."

Surprise and shock was apparent and Monica's eyes.

"King Noctis? But we haven't heard of him since we hid him on Angelgard," her eyes seemed to become impossibly larger. "You don't mean…"

"My brother has been repeating…multiple times, that he'd come back one day, but... "Iris circled an arm around her knees and rubbed the tiredness from her face hopelessly. "I had hoped he'd at least drop by before heading to Insomnia. But he didn't come back with them..." she ended on a whisper and her throat tightened. "He has to be alive, right?"

She had to...they had to hold on to that hope.

As they settled into a thoughtful silence, the hum of a nearby conversation floated to them. A woman talking to her friend, both admiring the setting sun, thanking the Six for granting them the opportunity to see it. A harmless comment that would have stayed that way if a nearby man who also heard the conversation, hadn't broken down in tears.

"And such gods they are, never appearing once in those long ten of years of Darkness.

Iris and Monica exchanged a worried glance at each as the two female friends looked at the man with an offended expression on their faces.

"They have been protecting our World since the beginning" the woman replied, anger threatening to spill out. "The Star Scourge weakened them is all."

"'Protecting our World' you say?" scoffed the man, ignoring the glances thrown his way. "The Archaean almost made the region crumble because of its mood swings. And say that to any Altissian refugee after the Tide Mother destroyed their homes. Why didn't they lift a single finger as our friends and family were slaughtered by daemons? Why would they care for us? We are dirt to them!"

Other civilians had stopped and tried listening in without being too obvious, with much failure.

"The losses we had are tragic" conceded the woman, affront still visible on her face. "But they still gave us a future in the end."

"Oh no no" sobbed the man the scars of grief and the utter betrayal everyone had felt during those ten years evident on his face.

" Whoever or whatever saved us wasn't them."


It was late at night, he could feel it from the complete absence of light. Even over a muddled brain from exhaustion and pain meds, the incessant drone of the ventilation found a way to keep Ignis awake. Eye open onto the familiar darkness, but unfamiliar environment of an infirmary. Someone coughed in the distance.

Only the calm familiar breathing of his two friends soothed him, they were alive and how long has it been all of them sleeping close to one another. But there was another sleepy voice missing, he remembered, heart sinking. A quiet snore he had been missing for years.

As time had passed and feared he'd never see his King in his lifetime again, he had wished he'd be granted the chance for them to meet again, even for single day, and hang out together like the good old days before everything went downhill. His prayer had been answered and 'a single day' wasn't enough to soothe the re-opened wound his disappearance had left.

They had often checked up on him while he was stowed away on Angelgard, making sure the boat was functioning for the day Noctis would need to go back to the main land. They had tried approaching him, but whatever the Crystal was doing to him, kept him in a complete stasis. He never had the need to eat or any other bodily need and that was a good thing, because nobody had been able to touch him. Ignis, even with his very limited eyesight, managed to see the scorching unnatural light surrounding the body of his friend.

Hearing his voice again after ten years was a blessing and a curse at the same time. A curse because they've learned only moments later their joy wouldn't last until Dawn...and there was nothing do but accept it or resign themselves to a fate that would inevitably lead them to their deaths.

So they put on their smile to help Noctis carry out his destiny courageously, a destiny similar to the one of his forefathers. Painfully short lives they deserved to live at their fullest.

Ignis hoped their fallen friend would remain with them in a way, watching over them from the Beyond, at peace.

"Rule well, King of Lucis."