A week bled away in the half-light of the hut.
Outside, the forest whispered with rain-heavy leaves and the distant chatter of unseen birds. Inside, the air smelled faintly of boiled herbs and drying bandages.
By the seventh morning, Gideon was already out on his feet, rolling his shoulders with a faint crack of joints. His scars were fresh but knitted cleanly — the strange blessing of his half-lycan blood, sealing wounds at a pace that left Caleb muttering curses of envy.
Caleb himself had healed just as quickly, though in a quieter way. The druid's skin seemed to drink in the forest air; the deep cuts along his arms had faded to thin lines, the bruises almost gone. He claimed it was the "roots under the floorboards feeding him," but Eliakim wasn't sure if that was literal or just Caleb's odd humor.
Ezra, though… Ezra was still swaddled in pale linen from throat to ankles. The mana depletion had hit her like a disease, slowing every thread of her body's repair. The bandage over her eyes remained untouched. She never asked to have it removed.
Eliakim's own body was another matter.When Malachi peeled back the last wrappings from his side, the skin beneath was already pink and whole. No bruising. No swelling. As if the puncture wound had been weeks old, not days.
Malachi studied it for a moment too long."You heal fast," he said finally.
Eliakim gave a small shrug, eyes on the fire instead of the boy. "Good constitution, I guess."
"That's not constitution," Malachi replied, his tone calm but threaded with something sharper. "Gideon heals because of his lycan blood. Caleb because the forest favors him. But you…" He leaned back, watching Eliakim's expression. "You're different."
"Or maybe I just got lucky," Eliakim said, too quickly.
The boy's gaze lingered on him another second, as though trying to read the spaces between words. Then Malachi looked away, returning to grinding herbs. But Eliakim could feel it — the unspoken question hanging in the air like a blade.
The others were too busy with their own scars to notice, but Eliakim knew.Malachi was thinking about why.
And the one thing Eliakim couldn't tell him was that his blood wasn't wholly human.That it wasn't luck.It was the gift — and curse — of being half demon.