The shop smelled of talc, cheap liquor, and something underneath both — something copper-warm that you recognize without needing to name it.
Raymond sat in a cracked leather chair, draped in a white cape. The whiteness was perfect. That, at least, never changed in this dream: the cape always immaculate, the walls always yellowed, the ceiling always threaded with cracks like old porcelain that had finally run out of patience.
The fan turned. Each rotation seemed to wonder if it was really worth continuing.
In the mirror, his reflection watched him like it knew something it refused to say. Too sharp. Too still. Not his reflection — a photograph of him propped above his own coffin.
The barber behind him changed with every blink. Gaunt old man. Young woman with split lips. Kid with a shaved head. Something else after that, neither man nor woman nor anything familiar. Raymond chose not to look at it too long.
The hands, though, stayed the same.
Precise. Calm. The kind of hands you trust with a blade.
The razor slid across his cheek with a silky hiss.
"You come back often," said the barber.
Raymond watched his own eyes in the mirror.
"Only when I sleep badly."
"You always sleep badly."
"Then I come back often."
A laugh. No joy in it — just the mechanics of laughter, the shape without the substance.
On the shelf, jars lined up like trophies. Blonde locks. Grey ones. Others stained dark brown, which nobody ever calls by its real name in places like this.
"You look proud today."
He let a beat pass.
"I am."
"Of what?"
He took his time answering. Not because he didn't know. Because he liked holding the answer a moment before giving it — even here, even to something that wasn't alive.
"Clean work."
The barber leaned in. His breath was cold, too cold for a room this suffocating.
"The banker."
Not a question.
Raymond didn't answer right away. The mirror behind him showed a rainy street that hadn't been there a second before. Yellow streetlamps. Wet cobblestones. A black car parked at an angle. Then a man running. Then falling.
"He sold children. Dressed them up as orphans, resold them as debts."
"And you punished him."
"I ruined him first."
A real smile this time. Rare.
"Three months moving his accounts. Six weeks turning his men. Two nights convincing him his wife was talking to the police." A pause. "He had a way of looking over his shoulder. I won't forget it."
In the mirror: an older man, heavy, trembling in an empty office. Sitting in his leather chair like a coffin he hadn't yet understood was his.
"When he finally understood, he was alone."
The barber murmured:
"And then?"
Raymond looked his reflection straight in the eyes.
"I cut his throat with his letter opener."
The fan groaned. The barber went still — one second, two, just long enough to mean something. Then resumed, like nothing.
"You're proud of that."
"Yes."
"Why?"
There were acceptable answers to that question. And one true one.
"Because he was afraid."
The barber's face changed again — not toward anything human. A child this time. Eight years old, maybe nine. Blue lips. Swollen eyes. The kind of face you find in rivers after winter.
"You're lying."
The razor settled against Raymond's throat. Not a threat yet. Just a reminder of geography.
"You're proud because you like to choose. Not punish. Choose."
Silence.
The mirror cracked. One line first — thin, capillary, like a hair laid flat on glass. Then ten. Then the whole surface fractured into fragments that didn't fall, suspended there, each one reflecting something different. A hospital corridor. An empty child's room. A hand he recognized but couldn't name.
The barber pressed a little harder.
"Wake up."
Xavier ran.
His boots slipped, caught, slipped again. His arms had been burning for at least two kilometers and Raymond weighed like a man who was seriously testing the hypothesis of his own death.
"Is he breathing?!" Delo, behind him, was wheezing like a furnace.
"I don't know!"
"That's not—"
"Reassuring, I know, shut up and run!"
Raymond hung between them, one arm over each shoulder. His head lolled with every rut. His blood ran down hot — not the comfortable kind of hot. The kind that reminds you there's a finite amount of it.
Delo tripped on a root.
"By the ancestors, he's still bleeding!"
"I noticed!"
A window appeared in Xavier's field of vision. Bright. Clean. Completely out of place.
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He blinked. It followed his gaze. Patient. Impassive.
"Not now." He swiped it away. It came back, offset to the side, slightly smaller — like something learning diplomacy.
"Who are you talking to?!" Delo shouted.
"Nobody!"
"Very—"
"If you say reassuring one more time I'm leaving you to carry him alone."
Silence from Delo. They kept running.
They burst into the clearing.
The old baobab was there — not massive, not magical, just old in the way certain things decide to be out of sheer stubbornness. The hut at its base looked like it had assembled itself by accumulation: roots, bones, twisted wood, and a deliberate intention to discourage unannounced visitors. Animal skulls hung under the eaves. Inside one of them, something moved.
Xavier chose not to look at that too closely.
He kicked the door.
"Open up! He's dying!"
The door opened by itself.
"Then come in instead of decorating my threshold with noise."
She was small, dry, wrinkled like leather left too long in the sun. The kind of woman who looks fragile right up until she opens her mouth. Her eyes had the quiet meanness of genuinely competent people — not cruelty for its own sake, just a very old impatience with everything that wastes her time.
She looked at Raymond for half a second.
"Put him down."
The blackened wood table groaned under his weight. She pulled back the torn shirt, pressed, sniffed.
"Hmm."
Xavier swallowed.
"Hmm what?"
"Hmm: either he's very strong, or very stupid, to have survived this."
"Both," said Delo, from the back of the hut where he had carefully positioned himself out of reach of anything that might animate.
"Quiet."
She placed her hands flat on Raymond's chest. Her fingers began to glow — a dull, organic light, like bioluminescence from deep water. The flesh shivered under the pressure. The edges of the wounds lifted, searched, recognized something. A wet crack sounded from the shoulder — the kind of noise you're never ready for even when you know what it is.
Xavier stepped back half a pace.
"Ray does that too."
The healer went still. Slowly — like someone who chooses not to turn around too fast because the answer deserves a preliminary silence.
She turned around.
"Ray does that too?"
"…Yes?"
The expression on her face was that of someone who had just heard something equally stupid and harmless.
"A monkey hits a drum. That doesn't make it a musician."
Delo burst out laughing from his corner. Xavier pointed an indignant finger. "That was uncalled for."
"No. It was precise."
She went back to work, muttering between her teeth.
"This is where his master learned. How not to kill patients by fixing them halfway."
"That was you?"
"Obviously."
A bone reset in the shoulder with a dry snap. Xavier winced involuntarily — that sound goes through people even when it's not their own body.
"He never listens," he said, without quite knowing why he said it.
"That's not from him either," said the old woman, without looking up.
The light came back.
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Xavier startled. The healer raised an eyebrow without stopping what she was doing.
"You blink a lot. Parasite?"
"Do you see… a window?"
"I see several in my hut."
"No. A floating window."
"Ah."
She worked on a rib. Raymond didn't move, but something beneath his skin rearranged itself with an uncomfortable precision.
"The system."
Delo made a warding sign with both hands. "Don't say that word here."
"Why not?"
"Because it attracts idiots who want to level fast," said the old woman in a perfectly neutral tone, like she was reading off an inventory.
Xavier leaned forward. "You can see it too?"
"Since before you were born."
"Then why am I seeing it now?"
She didn't answer right away. Her hands kept working — methodical, unhurried.
"You survived something that wanted to eat you." A shrug. "The world rewards survivors. It's how it encourages the behavior."
Xavier hesitated. "…And if I helped finish the fight. Do I gain levels?"
She looked up at him for the first time since they'd put Raymond down.
"Do you want strength or numbers?"
A silence.
"…Both?"
"At least you're honest."
She worked for a long time. The flesh closed — partially. The fractures stopped moving under the skin. Raymond's breathing, which had sounded like someone reminding themselves how it was done, found a rhythm that was at least slightly less alarming.
But Xavier was watching. And what he saw was what remained open.
The flank not fully sealed. The left arm still swollen. Raw cuts bleeding cleanly, refusing to close.
"Wait."
She was already cleaning her hands in a bowl of dark water.
"You're done?"
"Yes."
"But he's still in pieces."
"Correct."
"Then…" He searched for the words.
"Finish?"
The old woman sighed — the specific resignation of someone who has had this conversation too many times with too many people.
"If I make him new after every fight, he stays breakable."
She tapped Raymond's sternum.
"Bone healed under strain grows back denser."
His arm.
"Flesh mended after abuse learns to absorb."
His temple.
"Retained pain teaches faster than I can."
She looked at him.
"Do you want comfort, or do you want a monster?"
Xavier opened his mouth. Closed it.
He thought about Raymond. The training ground. The cold mud of early mornings. The way Raymond never raised his voice — who just said again, like repetition was the only philosophy worth having.
Breathe after the pain, not before.
The body lies when it panics.
He grimaced.
"…A monster."
"Good. You're learning."
Delo raised his hand with the caution of someone who knows he probably shouldn't. "I'd prefer the comfort option."
"Nobody asked you," said Xavier.
"I just wanted to be transparent about my position."
Silence settled. Xavier let it.
Outside, someone was moaning — a long, low, patient note. The kind of sound that comes from someone who has moved past sharp pain and into something more enduring.
"What actually happened out there? When we arrived, it was almost over."
The old woman took a steaming bowl. Drank. Stared at the fire.
"Almost over."
She laughed — short, humorless.
"Boy. The real slaughter started before you got there."
Xavier said nothing.
She spoke without drama. That was what made it worse — the level voice, the informative tone of someone who had seen enough terrible things to stop giving them music.
"The creature you encountered. Three heads. Jaws wide enough to take a horse by the shoulder. It started all of this." A pause. "The village chief held the line with Boyka."
"Boyka was there?"
"Covered in blood. Very irritated. So yes."
Xavier let out an involuntary laugh — short, nervous.
"We lost most of the young warriors."
The laugh died.
Not gradually. It stopped, like something cut with a blade.
Xavier kept his eyes on Raymond. On his chest rising and falling. On his hands that weren't moving yet.
The old woman said nothing. She let the information take the space it was owed.
Then, after a long moment:
"They managed to drive the creature back."
"How?" Xavier said, quietly.
"In my opinion, it found a more interesting prey."
Her gaze slid to Raymond.
"Him."
A long silence.
"I don't know their history," she said. "But they do. They recognized each other — the way only two beings who've been carrying something for a long time can recognize each other. And they both wanted to finish what they'd been carrying."
The fire crackled. Outside, the moaning had stopped. That wasn't reassuring either — the silence after that kind of sound can mean anything.
"In passing," she added, in the same flat tone reserved for practical information, "the village chief lost his right arm."
Xavier shot to his feet so fast he knocked something over.
"What?!"
Delo knocked something over as well.
"WHAT?!"
The healer looked at both of them with the expression of someone who had been expecting exactly this.
"If you shout louder, maybe it'll grow back."
The door opened.
No knock. No announcement. It opened, and the chief came in — tall, pale with the kind of pallor fever installs and doesn't return quickly, his face hardened into something that had moved past pain and hadn't yet decided what it was becoming. His right arm ended halfway down. The stump was wrapped tight, up to the shoulder, with the systematic care reserved for things you don't want to look at anymore.
He looked at Xavier.
"I hear perfectly well."
Xavier froze. "…Chief."
"You shout like a goat."
Delo murmured from his corner: "He's going to kill us."
"Not today." The chief moved toward the table. He looked at Raymond — not with pity, not yet with gratitude, but with the measured consideration of someone weighing a debt and deciding if it's fair. "Today I'm tired."
He stood there a moment.
Then
"When he wakes up. Tell him I owe him an arm."
He turned and left. The door closed behind him — not sharply. Carefully. That was almost worse.
Delo breathed, very quietly: "I think that was respect."
Xavier was still looking at the door.
"I think I'm afraid."
The window came back.
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He looked at Raymond. His fist closed around something — tight, the way only a man refusing to let go even unconscious holds something. He looked at the door. The old woman, watching him with her ancient eyes and her unhealthy patience.
"…If I press it, do I lose an arm too?"
She let out a laugh — short, dry, real. The first one.
"No. Just your illusions."
On the table, Raymond's fingers moved.
Slow. Deliberate.
The rusted pendant, clenched in his fist from the very beginning.