The air in the Lower District hung heavy, thick with the metallic tang of rust. Raine buried his face deeper into the stolen cloak, his pointed ears twitching as they caught a faint groan echoing from the depths of a narrow alley.
Following the sound, he spotted a boy curled up in a pile of moldy straw, his face pale and grayish. The boy's swollen belly bulged like a drum, and blood-tinged vomit clung to the corner of his mouth. The moment Raine's fingers brushed the boy's neck, a strange vision flooded his mind—silver-tinged toxic mist coursed through the boy's bloodstream, steadily devouring his organs from within.
"Don't… touch me…" the boy whispered weakly, struggling feebly. "You're… the evil withering healer…"
Raine's left hand pressed against moss growing in a crack of the wall involuntarily. From his palm, verdant veins spread outward like roots burrowing deep into the plant, drawing life energy through the moss, into his body, transforming it, and then pumping it into the boy.
The moss instantly yellowed and crumbled to dust, but the boy's swollen belly began to deflate rapidly. As the healed child scrambled away in terror, Raine noticed new glowing runes spreading across the crystal embedded in his chest—symbols resembling the elven glyph for "Equivalent Exchange."
Suddenly, the steady clank of metal footsteps echoed on the cobblestones. Two Judgment Knights wielding heretic detectors were closing in. The green flames at the compass centers spun wildly, their pointers locking onto Raine's location. Even more unsettling was the sight on the knight to the left—the skin on his neck writhed with wormlike bulges, mirroring the green patterns under Raine's own skin, only tainted with a putrid, puslike hue.
"In the name of the Holy Light, we search—"
An explosion cut off the proclamation. The oak door of the Gray Weasel Apothecary was blasted open and sent flying. A scarred gnome brandishing a smoking sulfur bottle shouted urgently, "This way! Master!"
Following the gnome through winding backstreets, Raine found himself before an inconspicuous shop. Inside, the scene stunned him: parchment scrolls adorned the walls, detailing intricate maps of human energy channels; brass distillers boiled a glowing blue potion; in one corner stood a crystal skeleton marked with acupuncture points—an unmistakable workshop of a modern healer.
"I've memorized every page of the New Age Medical Text you left behind!" the gnome proprietor, Gray Weasel, beamed proudly as he brandished a leather-bound notebook. "The elixir cultivated from Moonlight Mushrooms may cause temporary blindness…"
Raine flipped open the notebook and froze. This was no ancient manuscript—it was his own anatomical drawings from medical school back on Earth, translated into elven script. The date at the foot of the page was the very day he had died.
Suddenly, the hidden door to the storeroom burst open. A tall, gaunt figure draped in rotting black robes emerged, stepping through a veil of black mist. His right arm was nothing but writhing shadows.
"A secondary vessel?" Malcolm, an Abyssal Steward, glanced sideways at the figure and plucked a walnut-sized green crystal core from Gray Weasel's chest cavity. "The Elven Council actually prepared a backup plan…"
At that moment, Raine's own crystal pulsed violently, emitting a ravenous hum. He watched helplessly as his right hand moved of its own accord toward the crystal core. Verdant veins webbed beneath his skin like a living spider's web.
The moment the two crystals touched, Gray Weasel's body crumbled like aged parchment. The dying gnome's electronic voice echoed in Raine's mind:
"Master… remember… your heartbeat must never exceed… the number of rings on the Sacred Tree…"