[ It's a Thing, but Sara's already figured he needs actual reassurance when he was the one who felt the life fade from her in the first place. It's why she steps closer and sinks into the seat beside him, leaning in enough so their shoulders touch-- or at least that there's some physical contact. ]

All right. Where I live now is called Erebonia, an empire led by Eugent Reise Arnor the Third, and it's largely a military nation. Thors, where I taught, is a military academy, after all. It's still currently recovering from a Civil War between the Noble Alliance, which as you can guess is largely composed of nobles who wanted to drag things back to the old ways where they ran everything, and the Reformist Faction, which had progressives who wanted to completely abolish the class system. During that time, the Noble Alliance took over Thors in an attempt to gain the cooperation of those whose family members attended. I escaped, along with my class and a lot of other students, but we were separated.

It's a long story, but once I ran into them again, I joined in on freeing some hostages and taking down some corrupt nobles and rescuing one of the princes-- we didn't want to side with either group, we just wanted to minimize casualties and protect the people we cared about.

[ She holds up a finger now. ]

And being a neutral force is exactly what a Bracer is. They're investigative and combat specialists who travel around the country protecting citizens and doing what they can to help keep the peace, without actively interfering in war between nations unless absolutely necessary. The senior bracers are ranked G through A, and increase that rank by the requests they accept and fulfill-- which could be anything from monster extermination or bringing back items in a monster-infested area to escorts and dealing with criminals.