Maya's POV
A warrior's severed arm lands at my feet.
"Heal him!" someone screams. "He's bleeding out!"
Draven's army crashes into Frostclaw warriors like a tidal wave of fire and claws. Bodies fly. Blood sprays. The peaceful clearing transforms into a battlefield in seconds.
And I'm standing in the middle of it, completely useless.
No. Not useless. The system won't let me be useless.
[EMERGENCY QUEST ACTIVATED!]
QUEST: THE FIRST TEST
Objective: Heal 5 critically wounded clan members during battle
Reward: Advanced Healing Abilities, +1000 XP, Clan Trust +50
Failure: Lose 50% current health (You'll have 22 health left—basically dead)
Time Limit: 30 minutes
Current Healed: 0/5
Thirty minutes. Five dying warriors. Or I die instead.
"I hate you," I snarl at the invisible interface.
The warrior with the missing arm convulses on the ground, eyes rolling back. Blood pumps from the stump in rhythmic spurts. He has maybe two minutes before he's gone.
I drop to my knees beside him, hands already glowing. "Stay with me!"
Golden light pours from my palms into the injury. I feel his pain through the connection—the burning agony, the shock, the terror of dying. My ER training kicks in. Stop the bleeding first. Seal the major vessels. Then worry about the arm.
The blood flow slows. Stops. New tissue crawls across the wound like fast-forwarded plant growth. In twenty seconds, the stump is sealed with fresh pink skin.
The warrior gasps, alive but missing his limb. His arm is still on the ground, too damaged to reattach.
[HEALED: 1/5]
"Thank you," he chokes out before someone drags him away from the fighting.
I don't have time to respond. Three more warriors hit the ground near me, their bodies mangled. A woman with her stomach torn open. A man with his throat ripped. A teenager whose leg bends the wrong way.
Choose. I have to choose who lives.
The throat injury—he's drowning in his own blood. I lunge for him, pressing my hands to his neck. The healing magic fights against the damage, knitting torn vessels, repairing his windpipe. He coughs blood but starts breathing again.
[HEALED: 2/5]
A scream makes me spin. The woman with the stomach wound is trying to hold her intestines inside her body. Tears stream down her face.
I crawl to her, my hands shaking. This is worse than anything I saw in the ER. "Look at me. Don't look down."
She meets my eyes. They're the same bright blue as my little sister's were.
Focus. I channel healing light into her abdomen. The torn muscles knit back together. Organs slide back into place, membranes repairing themselves. It takes forty seconds—forty seconds where she's screaming and I'm crying—but finally the wound closes.
[HEALED: 3/5]
[TIME REMAINING: 21 MINUTES]
The teenager with the broken leg grabs my ankle. "Please. I can't feel my toes."
Nerve damage. If I don't fix it now, he'll be crippled forever.
I place my hands on his twisted leg and push power into the injury. Bone fragments shift, grinding back into alignment. He screams so loud I think my eardrums might burst. But the leg straightens, the bones fuse, the nerves reconnect.
[HEALED: 4/5]
One more. I just need one more.
That's when I see him.
Kael's second-in-command, Drake, is fighting three Emberpeak warriors at once. He's massive, maybe seven feet tall in human form, with scars covering his arms. But he's losing. One of the fire beasts slashes across his back, and Drake goes down hard.
Nobody moves to help him.
The other Frostclaw warriors actually step back, letting the enemy surround him.
"Help him!" I scream at them. "He's your brother!"
A female warrior spits on the ground. "Drake's a traitor's son. Let him die."
My blood runs cold. They're going to watch him get torn apart because of who his father was?
Drake locks eyes with me across the battlefield. There's no hope in his gaze. Only resignation. He's accepted that his own clan will let him die.
Something inside me snaps.
I sprint toward him, dodging claws and weapons. A fire beast swipes at my head—I duck. Another tries to grab me—I roll under its arms. My ER nurse instincts take over: get to the patient, nothing else matters.
I skid to my knees beside Drake just as an Emberpeak warrior raises his blade for a killing blow.
Golden light explodes from my hands in a protective dome around us both. The blade bounces off like hitting solid steel.
"What are you doing?" Drake rasps. Blood pours from the gashes on his back. "I'm not worth saving."
"Nobody gets to decide that except me." I press my hands to his wounds. The healing magic flows, but it's different this time. Slower. Like his body is fighting against it.
That's when I feel it—dark magic wrapped around his heart like chains. A curse. Someone put a death curse on him, and it's been slowly killing him for years.
"You're cursed," I whisper. "Who did this to you?"
His eyes widen in shock. "You can see it?"
"I can feel it." The curse is old, vicious, designed to make him weak in battle. To ensure he'd die if he ever fought seriously. "This is why your clan thinks you're weak. The curse makes you lose every fight."
Tears streak through the blood on his face. "My father betrayed Kael's father. Got him killed. The clan elder cursed me as punishment. Said I'd die in battle like my father deserved to."
Elder. My hands freeze.
"What elder?" I demand. "What was his name?"
"Torin."
The world tilts.
Torin cursed Drake years ago. Which means he's been manipulating this clan long before I arrived. How many other people has he cursed? How many deaths is he responsible for?
I push more power into Drake's wounds, but this time I don't just heal. I grab onto that death curse with my magic and rip it out like pulling weeds from a garden.
Drake screams. His body convulses. Black smoke pours from his mouth as the curse tears free.
Then suddenly he's gasping, his eyes clear for the first time. "I can breathe. I can actually breathe!"
[HEALED: 5/5]
[QUEST COMPLETE!]
[REWARD: ADVANCED HEALING UNLOCKED]
[NEW ABILITY: CURSE BREAKING]
[CLAN TRUST: +50]
The system rewards flood through me. My mana bar refills. New knowledge downloads into my brain—advanced healing techniques, how to sense curses, how to break dark magic.
And something else. A warning.
[ALERT: ELDER TORIN HAS MARKED YOU AS PRIORITY THREAT]
[HE WILL COME FOR YOU TONIGHT]
Drake staggers to his feet beside me. Without the curse weighing him down, he moves like a completely different person. Fast. Deadly. Powerful.
He tears through the three Emberpeak warriors like they're paper.
The other Frostclaw warriors stop and stare. They've never seen Drake fight at full strength because the curse never let him.
"She broke the curse," someone whispers. "The Moon Bride freed him."
More warriors crowd around, suddenly looking at me with awe instead of fear. A young man steps forward with an injured shoulder. "Can you heal me too?"
Then a woman with burns. Then an older warrior with a festering wound.
They're not afraid of me anymore. They want my help.
But I'm staring past them, at the edge of the battlefield where Torin stands watching. Even from this distance, I see his smile.
He raises one hand. Snaps his fingers.
Luca's stone body, still frozen mid-scream, cracks down the middle.
"NO!" Kael's roar shakes the ground.
The statue crumbles into dust.
Kael's cousin—his best friend—is gone. Not frozen. Not trapped.
Dead.
And Torin just proved he can kill anyone, anytime, with a snap of his fingers.
The system chimes in my head:
[WARNING: FINAL QUEST APPROACHING]
[TORIN WILL OFFER YOU A CHOICE TONIGHT]
[CHOOSE WRONG, AND EVERYONE YOU'VE HEALED WILL DIE]
[CHOOSE RIGHT, AND YOU BECOME HIS PRISONER FOREVER]
[THERE IS NO THIRD OPTION]
I look at Drake, at the warriors surrounding me with hope in their eyes, at Kael who's collapsing with grief over Luca's dust.
They're all counting on me.
And in twelve hours, I have to choose which ones die.