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Keeper's Adage:
"When the healer takes up the blade to mend an unmade world, the first cut is not on the wood or the beast, but on the soul. The price of light is measured not in coin, but in the sacred purpose twisted into a weapon, and the ghost of who you were, left bleeding on the sanctuary floor."
– Scroll of Sundered Threads of Virgil
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Four Years Ago – Part IV
The Rootpaths breathed damp and heavy, a labyrinth of stone arteries choked with the scent of wet iron and crumbling earth. Water dripped somewhere in the fathomless dark—a slow, mocking counter-rhythm to the frantic hammering of Hatim's heart. Every slippery step echoed, swallowed by walls etched with the desperate pleas of a hundred forgotten healers: faded glyphs for strength, wards against decay, final prayers to Asha scratched beside crude maps leading only to graves.
Hatim's shoulders burned. Granny Maldri's weight between him and Lyra was terrifyingly light, yet every stumble threatened to spill her onto the slick stone. Ash clung to her skin like a shroud, but beneath it, the true horror pulsed: a violet shimmer, irregular and sickly, tracing the veins beneath her translucent skin. Unbinding. The word was a cold knife twisting in Hatim's gut. It didn't wound; it unraveled. It stole not life, but the essence of life, leaving only hollowed flesh.
Lyra kicked aside a snarl of luminous Gloom-Lichen, its usual soft pulse erratic, disturbed. "Faster, Hatim!" Her voice was frayed wire, but the tunnels were a tomb, refusing haste. The glyphs watched them pass – warnings in the Old Tongue, pleas to silent gods, markers for those who carried the dying through Embermark's rotten veins.
Maldri's breath hitched—a wet, papery rattle. The Glimmer-Lantern at her belt guttered wildly, casting frantic shadows that danced across carvings of weeping eyes and broken circles. Its weak light only deepened the suffocating dark.
Then, the Bone-Reed Archway, woven with Wyrmgrass and clattering charms – home. Sanctuary.
The sanctuary was dead.
Hatim lowered Maldri onto the moss-lined cot. Her fingers spasmed, lips forming silent words lost to the void. Lyra lunged for the shelves, scattering jars, her voice cracking. "Moonpetal Bloom! Thorn-Root extract! Where's the Goldbane Tincture?!" Her hands, usually so sure, trembled as she fumbled with wax seals.
Hatim pressed his palm to Maldri's forehead. Cold sweat. Eyes vacant, fixed on some unseen horror. The violet corruption had spread, a spiderweb of decay reaching her temples, leaching the vibrant brown from her skin.
"It's not sickness," Hatim rasped, the truth a stone in his throat.
Lyra froze. A jar slipped from her fingers, shattering on the packed earth floor, releasing the sharp, futile scent of dried Star-Thistle. The silence that followed was thicker than the Rootpath's gloom, heavy with the death of hope.
Unbinding. No poultice mended it. No chant soothed it. No Sinks remedy touched its rootless hunger. Only one thing whispered in the desperate corners of the district held even a sliver of promise: Pure Akar. Uncut. Unbound. The lifeblood of the city, hoarded by the Crowns, flowing in veins far above the Sinks.
"She told me," Hatim whispered, his voice raw. "Pure Akar. From rulers of the Ashen Throne. It might… cleanse."
Lyra whirled, her eyes wide with disbelief that curdled into bitter fury. "You think they'd spare a drop for her? For us? Hatim, look at us! We're Sinks-born! Ash in their eyes! The Crowns would burn the whole district to cinders before letting its touch grace Granny's skin!" Her laugh was a broken thing, sharp as flint on stone.
Maldri convulsed. A trickle of black, viscous fluid, like corrupted tree sap, seeped from the corner of her mouth. The violet light beneath her skin flared, hungry.
Hatim stood. His gaze locked on the object hanging above the cold, dead hearth. Not a decoration. A legacy. The cleaver. Its blade wasn't mere steel; it was shrine-metal, forged in the volcanic breath of the world's dawn, its edge honed by Maldri's own hands over decades. Glyphs coiled down its dark length—warding sigils meant for healing roots and blessing herbs, hardened by necessity into something capable of defending their fragile sanctuary. Symbols of protection turned to tools of survival.
His fingers closed around the worn leather hilt. The weight was familiar, solid. An anchor in the drowning despair. Right.
"Then I'll make them see me," Hatim stated, his voice low, ironclad.
Lyra stared, horror dawning. "The Forbidden Woods? Past the Vein-Wardens' markers? Hatim, you'll be dead before you clear the first watchtower! The Crown huntsmen shoot trespassers on sight!"
"Nobles hunt there," he countered, jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. "For sport. For trophies. If I bring back something rare… a Frostfang pelt, untouched by blight… a living Veinbloom plucked from a thermal vent… maybe one will notice. Maybe they'll ask why a Sinks rat knows how to track what their hounds miss." The plan was madness. A suicide run dressed in desperate hope.
"You're not a hunter!" Lyra cried, desperation cracking her voice. "You mend broken bones, you read root-signs, you soothe fevers! Maldri made you a healer!"
Hatim looked down at the woman who had been shelter, wisdom, and stubborn fire. Her chest barely rose. The violet light pulsed, a cruel mockery of life. The memory of her hands, calloused but gentle, smoothing his hair after a nightmare, rose sharp and painful.
"She taught me to mend broken things," he whispered, the words thick with unshed tears. "Not to stand by and watch them be unmade."
He slung the cleaver's strap across his back, the cold metal a brand against his spine. He turned toward the door, towards the ash-choked Sinks and the deadly woods beyond.
Lyra's voice caught him, thin as the last thread of a frayed rope, filled with a terror deeper than the forest's shadows:
"When you come back…" A choked breath. "Don't be a ghost."
Hatim paused, hand on the woven Bone-Reed frame. He didn't look back. He couldn't. The image of her face, pale and terrified, would break his resolve.
"I won't."
He pushed through the curtain of charms. Their hollow rattle was the only farewell. The thick, ash-laden fog of the Sinks swallowed him whole. Behind him, the sanctuary door, the hearth, Lyra, and the fading ember of Granny Maldri's life sealed shut, the district closing around them like the jaws of a starving beast.