# Chapter 585: The Healer's Doubt
The clinic in the lower ward smelled of crushed herbs, old stone, and the faint, acrid tang of ozone. It was a scent Sister Judit had come to know as the smell of miracles and their price. Her sanctuary was a repurposed chantry, its stained-glass windows long since shattered and replaced with thick, greasy panes of glass that let in a weak, grey light. The pews were gone, replaced by rows of simple cots, each occupied by a soul bearing the mark of the Gift. Here, there were no roaring crowds or glittering prize purses, only the quiet, desperate struggle to manage the Cinder Cost.
Judit moved between the cots with a practiced, weary grace. Her hands, gnarled and stained from years of mixing poultices and setting bones, were gentle as they checked the pulse of a sleeping man whose Cinder-Tattoos had crawled up his neck like dark, thorny vines. She adjusted the damp cloth on his forehead, her expression a mask of professional calm. But her mind was on the cot in the far corner, screened by a threadbare curtain.
She pushed the curtain aside. The infant on the cot was no older than three months, his breaths a fragile, wheezing rhythm. His name was Sam. He was the reason this clinic existed. As she watched, a tiny, flickering ember of orange light blossomed on the child's cheek, sizzling for a moment before fading away. It wasn't a true flame; it was a manifestation of raw, untamed Gift, a spark of power his tiny body could not contain. Judit had seen it a dozen times in the last hour. Each spark left a faint, reddened patch on his skin, a miniature Cinder-Tattoo in the making.
She sighed, the sound lost in the quiet coughs and murmurs of the ward. The New Dawn had promised a world where the Gifted were not just weapons or spectacles, but people. Yet what did that promise mean for a child like Sam? His Gift was weak, yes, but it was volatile. It would flare with his cries, with his fevers, with the simple, overwhelming emotions of infancy. He would be a danger to himself, to his family. In the old world, under the Synod's harsh doctrine, he would have been taken, perhaps 'cleansed' or hidden away in a sterile cell until his power burned him out. Now? He would be an outcast. A walking fire hazard. Parents would pull their children away from him in the street. He would grow up seeing fear in every stranger's eyes. Judit had dedicated her life to healing the Gifted, but for the first time, she felt the true, crushing weight of how much more than medicine they needed. They needed a world that knew how to love them.
The heavy wooden door to the chantry creaked open, its sound cutting through the ward's quiet hum. Judit didn't look up immediately. Visitors were rare, and usually meant another desperate case. But the footsteps that echoed on the flagstones were not hesitant or hurried. They were measured, deliberate. Familiar. She straightened up, turning to see Chancellor Nyra Sableki standing just inside the doorway, her fine cloak a splash of deep blue against the clinic's drab browns and greys. She looked out of place, a piece of a grander, more hopeful world that had yet to fully touch this room of suffering.
"Sister Judit," Nyra said, her voice soft. She carried no retinue, no guards. She was alone.
"Chancellor," Judit replied, her tone neutral. She gestured towards a small, secluded alcove near the entrance, away from the sleeping patients. "We should not disturb them."
Nyra followed, her gaze sweeping over the cots, a flicker of profound sadness in her eyes. She saw the dark tattoos, the shallow breathing, the wasted frames. This was the other side of the glorious rebellion, the quiet, ongoing cost that didn't make it into the ballads and histories.
"I came for your counsel, not your title," Nyra said once they were in the alcove. The air here was cooler, smelling of dust and old mortar. "And for your honesty."
"My honesty is often a bitter tonic, Chancellor. Are you sure you're ready for it?" Judit leaned against the stone wall, crossing her arms. She had known Nyra for years, had tended her wounds after Ladder Trials, had listened to her whispered fears long before she was a Chancellor. That history gave her a latitude few others possessed.
"It's about Soren," Nyra said, getting straight to the point. She ran a hand through her hair, a gesture of uncharacteristic weariness. "His echoes. They're getting stronger. More frequent."
Judit nodded slowly. She had heard the reports, of course. Whispers on the wind, flickers of a man who should be gone, seen in moments of high emotion or danger. The people called them miracles, proof that their hero was still watching over them. Judit called them something else.
"And what do your councilors say?" Judit asked. "The strategists and the politicians?"
"They see a symbol," Nyra answered, her voice tight with frustration. "A rallying point. Morale is… fragile. The organized Blights, the whispers of a new cult… people are afraid. The echoes give them hope. They believe Soren is still with us, fighting from beyond the veil."
"And what do you believe, Nyra?" Judit's gaze was piercing, cutting through the Chancellor's mantle to the woman beneath.
Nyra looked away, towards the sliver of grey light from the window. "I want to believe it," she admitted, her voice barely a whisper. "When I am alone, I find myself listening for him. I tell myself it's for the good of the city, to gauge the public's reaction. But that's a lie. I'm just… a woman who misses him. And that hope is a dangerous thing for a leader to carry."
"Hope is not the problem," Judit said, her voice firm. "It's the blindness that comes with it. You are so focused on what these echoes *mean* to you, to the people who loved him, that you are not asking what they *are*."
"What do you mean?"
"You are a strategist, Nyra. Think. The Bloom is a force of decay, of unmaking. It is not a storyteller. It does not deal in ghosts and sentimental messages. Soren's final act was one of immense power, a sacrifice that burned him out and, for a time, burned the Bloom itself. He left a wound in the world. These 'echoes'… they are not his spirit. They are scar tissue. They are the world's memory of the trauma, a psychic aftershock."
Juit pushed off the wall and took a step closer. "And every time one of these aftershocks occurs, it weakens the scar. It tears open the wound just a little bit. You are celebrating a symptom of the world's sickness, not a sign of its recovery."
Nyra's face had paled. She had considered the echoes a mystery, a miracle, a political tool. She had not considered them a symptom. A relapse.
"The political dangers," Judit continued, pressing her advantage. "Your rivals on the council, the old noble families who chafe under your rule, what do they see? They see a leader basing policy on phantom visitations. They see an opportunity to question your stability, your judgment. And what about the Synod's remnants? The Inquisitors who survived the purge? They hunted men like Soren their entire lives. Do you think they will simply stand by while he is elevated to sainthood? They will call it heresy. They will use your hope to fracture the New Dawn from within."
The weight of Judit's words settled in the small alcove, heavier than the stone arches above them. Nyra sank onto a small wooden bench, the reality of her position crashing down on her. She was trying to build a new world on the foundation of the old one's hero, but Judit was telling her the foundation was haunted, and unstable.
"I have been trying to find a way to bring him back," Nyra confessed, the words tearing out of her. "Not truly. But… to understand the echoes. To control them. Maybe even to communicate. I thought if I could just prove he was still there, in some way…"
"You would feel less alone," Judit finished gently. The harsh pragmatism in her eyes softened, replaced by a deep, weary sympathy. She had seen this so many times in her clinic. The desperate hope of a family for a cure that didn't exist, for a miracle that would not come. It was a hope that could consume them, bankrupt them, make them blind to the care they *could* provide for the one they loved.
"You are trying to resurrect a ghost, Chancellor, while the living are dying in your wards," Judit said, her voice low and intense. She gestured back towards the cots. "That child, Sam. His parents believe the New Dawn means he will have a chance. But what chance will he have if his leader is chasing phantoms instead of building schools for children like him? What chance will any of them have if the fractures you ignore become chasms?"
Nyra looked at her hands, clenched into fists in her lap. She had fought for this world. She had bled for it. She had betrayed her family and her name for it. And now, her own heart was becoming its greatest liability.
"What do I do?" she asked, the question raw and vulnerable. It was not a Chancellor asking a subordinate, but a friend asking a guide.
"You do what you have always done," Judit said, her voice regaining its clinical strength. "You face the truth, however painful. You study the echoes not as a lover, but as a scientist. You contain them. You warn people of them. You stop treating a disease like a divine blessing. You lead with your head, not your heart. Your grief is your own, Nyra. It is a heavy burden, but you cannot ask the entire city to help you carry it."
She placed a hand on Nyra's shoulder. The touch was firm, grounding.
"Your quest for Soren is noble, but it is a personal one. It cannot be the policy of a nation. Let him go. Honor his memory by finishing his work. Build the world he died for, not the one you wish he was still in."
Nyra stood up, the Chancellor's mantle settling back onto her shoulders, though it seemed heavier now. The hope she had clung to, the secret, selfish flame that had kept her warm through the cold nights of leadership, now felt like a dangerous fire. Judit was right. She had been so focused on the ghost of her past that she was failing the future.
"Thank you, Sister," Nyra said, her voice steady once more. "Your honesty is, as always, a bitter tonic."
Judit managed a thin, tired smile. "I am a healer, Chancellor. My job is not always to make the patient feel better. Sometimes, it is simply to tell them the truth of their ailment so they might begin to heal."
As Nyra turned to leave, her resolve hardening into a new, more difficult plan, Judit spoke one last time, her voice echoing slightly in the quiet chantry.
"Hope is a powerful medicine, Chancellor," she said, her eyes holding a final, profound warning. "But an overdose can be just as deadly as the disease."