The morning sun did not rise in the marshes of the Sorrow-Fens. It simply leaked through the grey canopy like a bruise spreading under skin.
Miriam sat on a moss-covered root, her hands trembling as she brought a tin cup of water to her lips. The water was boiled, but it still tasted of iron and decay.
Around her, the camp was silent. The mercenaries were awake, but they moved with a new, rigid caution.
Ten feet away, the remains of the Drowner lay in a heap. It did not look like a corpse anymore. It looked like a garden gone wrong. The chest cavity had burst open, revealing not ribs, but a thick, calcified cage of white fungus. Vines as thick as a man's wrist had erupted from the creature's throat, freezing in the air like a silent scream.
It was grotesque. It was a violation of nature.
And Miriam had done it.
Kael stood over the mess, poking it with the tip of his boot. He was a man who understood steel and fire. He understood that if you hit a thing hard enough, it died. But this? This was biology weaponized.
He turned his head slowly to look at Miriam.
"You're eating," he said. It wasn't a question.
Miriam lowered the cup. "I need the calories. My core is empty."
"It shouldn't be," Kael said, his voice low. He walked over to her, his shadow falling across her face. "Healers don't burn Ether like that. You didn't just mend that thing. You... fed it."
Miriam looked up. She forced herself to hold his gaze. Her heart was hammering against her ribs—a hummingbird trapped in a cage—but she kept her face blank. The Academy had taught her one thing that was useful for survival: Clinical detachment.
"The creature was dead tissue animated by a parasite," Miriam said. "I accelerated the parasite's life cycle. It consumed the host. It was a logical solution."
"Logical," Kael repeated. He crouched down so his face was level with hers. He smelled of sweat and old leather. "You turned a monster into a bomb, Miriam. That's not healing. That's alchemy."
He reached out and grabbed her wrist. His grip was tight, bruising. He lifted her hand, inspecting her palm. The skin was pale, unblemished. No scorch marks. No signs of dark magic corruption. Just a Healer's soft hand.
"Do it again," he commanded.
Miriam pulled her hand back, wincing as the movement pulled at her sore shoulder. "I can't. If I try to force an overdose like that again without resting, my heart will stop. I am an Iron-rank, Kael. Not a Platinum Saint."
Kael studied her for a long moment. He was weighing her value against the risk. A Healer who could kill was useful. A Healer who couldn't be controlled was a liability.
Finally, he stood up.
"Pack your gear," he said to the group. "We move in ten minutes. And untie her hands."
Varn, the female mage, looked up from her pack. Her eyes were narrowed slits of jealousy. "Boss? You trust her?"
"No," Kael said, turning his back to them. "But she can't cast if she's tied up. And if we run into another pack of those things, I want her hands free."
He looked over his shoulder at Miriam.
"But keep an eye on her. If she points a finger at any of you, cut it off."
The Sorrow-Fens were not meant for human travel.
There was no road here. There was only mud that sucked at boots and roots that tried to trip the unwary. The air was thick with a yellow mist that clung to the skin like oil.
Miriam walked in the middle of the formation. She carried her own pack now—a small mercy.
As she walked, she turned her gaze inward.
The "Status" of a mage was not a game screen. It was a feeling. A proprioception of the soul.
She visualized her core. It sat behind her solar plexus. Yesterday, it had been a dim candle. Today, it felt... stretched.
The act of forcing the Ether into the Drowner had damaged her channels. She could feel the microscopic tears in her spiritual veins. It stung, a dull ache like a pulled muscle. But as the Ether slowly regenerated, flowing in from the humid air, it felt different.
It was heavier.
Adaptation, she thought. The body adapts to stress.
She had pushed her capacity to the breaking point. Now, as it healed, the scar tissue was forming thicker. She was still Iron-rank, but she was a harder Iron than she had been yesterday.
She looked at the plants they passed.
Ferns with purple leaves. Trees that wept black sap. Mushrooms the size of dinner plates.
Before yesterday, she would have seen them as scenery. Now, she saw them as systems.
That fern, she analyzed. It breathes nitrogen. If I overloaded its root system, it would suffocate the soil around it.
That tree. Its sap is a defense mechanism. If I stimulated the sap production, it would bleed itself dry in seconds.
The world was no longer just a physical space. It was a collection of biological locks, and she was holding a set of master keys.
"Stop staring at the weeds," Varn snapped from behind her. The mage poked Miriam in the back with her staff. "Keep moving."
Miriam stumbled but caught herself. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. She could hear the shallow rattle in Varn's breathing.
Smoker, Miriam diagnosed instantly. Or perhaps mild lung rot from inhaling casting fumes. She is short of breath after only two miles.
"You should drink more water, Varn," Miriam said quietly. "Your mucus membranes are dry. It makes you vulnerable to the miasma."
"Shut up," Varn spat. "Don't pretend you care about my health."
"I don't," Miriam said. "But if you collapse, I have to carry your pack. And I am very small."
A low chuckle came from the front. It was Gerry, the man she had healed. He was walking with a limp, but he was walking.
"She got you there, Varn," Gerry muttered.
"Focus," Kael ordered from the lead position. "The ground is changing."
He was right.
The mud was giving way to stone. Ancient, grey stone blocks, sunken into the earth and covered in slime. They were stepping onto the ruins of the Old Empire.
The architecture was jagged and cruel. The Rantean Empire built with steel, but the Old Empire had built with obsidian and blood-glass.
"The Sunken Temple is three miles north," Kael said, checking a compass that glowed with a faint blue light. "The Ether density is rising. Be ready."
Miriam felt it too. The air pressure was dropping. Her ears popped. The hair on her arms stood up.
This was a High-Ether Zone. For a warrior, it was invigorating. For a Healer, it was noisy. She could feel the heartbeat of every living thing around her. The scuttling of beetles under the rocks. The slow, rhythmic pulse of the moss.
It was overwhelming. She pressed her hands over her ears, but the sound wasn't auditory.
"Headache?" Gerry asked, falling back to walk beside her.
Miriam glanced at him. He wasn't looking at her with hostility anymore. There was a wary respect in his eyes.
"Sensitivity," she answered. "There is too much life here."
"Too much life?" Gerry frowned. "Place looks dead as a doornail to me."
"It isn't," Miriam whispered. "It's hungry."
They reached the edge of the Spore-Field an hour later.
It looked like a snowfield in the middle of the swamp. A vast, open clearing covered in a carpet of white, fluffy down. It was beautiful.
"Wait," Kael held up a hand.
He picked up a rock and threw it into the white field.
Poof.
Where the rock landed, a cloud of white dust exploded into the air. It hung there, shimmering.
"Sleep-Poppies?" Varn asked, squinting.
"Worse," Kael said grimly. "Ghost-Mold. If you breathe it, it grows in your lungs. You drown in your own fluids within an hour."
Miriam stared at the field. It stretched for half a mile. On the other side, the dark spire of the Temple rose from the mist like a jagged tooth.
"We can't go around," Kael said. "The marshes on the flanks are deep water. Drowner territory. We have to cross."
"We don't have masks," Varn pointed out.
"We have wet cloths," Kael said. "Tie them tight. Don't run. Running disturbs the air. Walk slow. Shallow breaths."
He looked at Miriam.
"If anyone starts coughing," he said, "you fix them. Can you purge fungi?"
Miriam looked at the white carpet.
"I can try," she said. "But Ghost-Mold is aggressive. It resists Ether."
"Just do your job."
They tied rags over their faces. Miriam used a strip of linen from her skirt. She soaked it in water from her canteen.
They stepped into the field.
The silence was absolute. The white mold cushioned their footsteps. It felt like walking on a mattress.
Miriam held her breath. She took small, calculated sips of air through the wet cloth.
Step. Step. Step.
They were halfway across when the wind changed.
It was just a breeze. A gentle gust from the north. But it ruffled the surface of the mold.
A wave of white dust lifted into the air. It rolled over them like a fog bank.
"Down!" Kael shouted, his voice muffled.
They crouched, curling into balls.
Miriam squeezed her eyes shut. She felt the dust settle on her skin. It itched. It felt like tiny insects burrowing into her pores.
Somewhere to her left, Varn coughed.
It was a small cough. A tickle.
Then, a gasp.
"I... I can't..." Varn wheezed.
Miriam turned. Through the white haze, she saw the mage clawing at her throat. Varn's face was turning purple.
The mold wasn't just in her lungs. It was reacting to the high concentration of Ether in the mage's blood. It was blooming instantly.
"Help her!" Kael roared, crawling forward.
Miriam scrambled through the dust. She reached Varn.
The mage was thrashing. Pink foam was bubbling from her lips.
Miriam grabbed Varn's shoulders. She slammed her hands onto the woman's chest.
Connection.
It was horrifying.
Inside Varn's lungs, it wasn't just mold. It was a forest. The spores had latched onto the alveoli and were expanding, turning the soft lung tissue into a hard, fibrous mat.
Varn was suffocating. There was no room for air.
I have to destroy it, Miriam thought. But it's everywhere. If I burn the mold, I burn the lung.
Standard healing—cell regeneration—would only make the mold grow faster. The mold thrived on vitality.
She had to do the opposite.
She had to Sterilize.
Miriam closed her eyes. She ignored the panic of the dying woman. She ignored her own fear.
She visualized radiation. She visualized the cold, sterile vacuum of space.
She didn't pour life into Varn. She pulled it out.
She initiated a Drain.
This was forbidden. A Healer never takes. A Healer only gives.
But Miriam grabbed the Ether signature of the mold—the frantic, hungry pulse of the fungus—and she yanked.
She absorbed the life force of the mold into herself.
It tasted like ash. It tasted like rot.
Miriam gagged. Her own veins turned black for a second as the corrupted energy hit her system. She felt sick, dizzy, poisoned.
But inside Varn's chest, the forest withered. The white fibers turned grey and crumbled to dust.
Varn gasped, a massive, heaving intake of air. She rolled over, vomiting grey sludge onto the white ground.
Miriam fell back, panting. She looked at her hands. The veins in her wrists were dark, pulsing with the stolen energy.
She felt... full.
She hadn't just removed the mold. She had eaten it.
Kael was staring at her. His eyes were wide above his mask.
"Move!" Miriam screamed, her voice shrill. "Run! Now!"
The shout broke the spell. Kael grabbed Varn by the harness and hauled her up. They abandoned stealth. They ran.
Clouds of spores erupted around them, but they didn't stop. They sprinted for the tree line.
They crashed through the brush on the other side, collapsing onto the wet, muddy earth of the temple grounds.
Safe.
For a long time, the only sound was the rasping of lungs.
Miriam lay on her back, staring at the grey sky. She felt a strange buzzing in her blood. The stolen energy was digesting. It wasn't pure Ether. It was dirty. But it was power.
Her "Iron" rank core flickered. It grew brighter.
She realized something terrifying.
She didn't just have to wait for her mana to regenerate.
She could harvest it.
"What are you?"
Varn was sitting up. She looked pale, shaken. She wiped the grey slime from her mouth and looked at Miriam with a mixture of gratitude and absolute horror.
"You didn't heal me," Varn whispered. "I felt it. You... you sucked the life out of it. You felt cold. Like a corpse."
Miriam sat up slowly. She felt stronger than she had ten minutes ago. The fatigue of the march was gone.
"I saved your life," Miriam said simply. "Do not ask about the method."
Kael stood up. He brushed the spores from his armor. He looked at Miriam, and for the first time, he didn't look at her like a tool. He looked at her like a weapon he didn't know how to holster.
"We're here," he said, cutting the tension.
He pointed.
Ahead of them, the Sunken Temple loomed.
It was a massive ziggurat of black stone, half-buried in the swamp. Water cascaded down its steps like a dark waterfall. The entrance was a gaping maw, flanked by two statues of weeping angels.
But it wasn't the temple that made them pause.
It was the camp in front of it.
Dozens of tents. Banners fluttering in the stagnant breeze. Soldiers in polished steel armor patrolling the perimeter.
"Damn it," Kael hissed. " The Royal Army."
He pulled the group behind a ridge of rock.
"The Solis Kingdom," he cursed. "They beat us to it. That's the 4th Battalion. 'The Sun-Eaters'."
Miriam peeked over the rock.
The soldiers were well-equipped. They had mages, archers, and heavy infantry. And in the center of the camp, she saw a large tent made of white silk.
Standing outside the tent was a man in golden robes. He held a staff topped with a sunburst.
"A Bishop," Varn whispered. "A High Priest."
Kael slammed his fist into the mud. "The contract is blown. We can't fight a Battalion. We have to turn back."
"No," Miriam said.
The three mercenaries looked at her.
"What did you say?" Kael snapped.
"I said no," Miriam said. She kept her eyes on the camp. "You want the artifact. I need... supplies. And information."
She pointed to the medical tent on the edge of the army camp.
"They have a field hospital," she said. "If they are Sun-Eaters, they rely on divine magic. But divine magic is slow. It requires prayer."
She looked at Kael.
"I can get us inside."
"You're insane," Kael said. "They'll shoot us on sight."
"Not if we are prisoners," Miriam said. "Or rather... if you are prisoners."
She turned to them. A plan was forming in her mind. It was reckless. It was the kind of plan that had gotten her expelled from the Academy.
"I am a Healer," she said. "The Kingdom of Solis reveres Healers. They call us Sisters. If I walk in there with three 'captured bandits' who I claim are my bodyguards... they will let us in."
"And then?"
"And then," Miriam's eyes flashed with a cold, green light. "We wait for nightfall. And I show you what else a Healer can do when she has access to a hospital full of sleeping men."
Kael stared at her. He saw the ambition in her eyes. It mirrored his own.
He grinned. It was a shark's grin.
"You're wicked, Miriam," he said. "I like it."
He drew his dagger.
"Tie us up," he ordered Gerry. "Let's go to church."
The plan was a gamble on human nature. Specifically, on the arrogance of the holy.
Miriam walked toward the camp gates. She had rubbed mud on her face to look distressed, but she wore her Healer's sash prominently across her chest.
Behind her, Kael, Varn, and Gerry walked with their hands bound loosely. They looked dejected, heads down.
"Halt!"
Two guards leveled their halberds at Miriam.
"State your business!"
Miriam stopped. She raised her hands, palms open. She let her Ether aura flare—a soft, warm, non-threatening white light. The universal sign of a Mender.
"Peace, brothers," Miriam said, her voice trembling perfectly. "I am Sister Miriam, a traveling doctor. These men... they are mercenaries who saved me from the Drowners. We are starving. We seek the Light's charity."
The guards hesitated. They saw the aura. They saw the sash.
In Solis culture, harming a Healer was a sin punishable by blinding.
"A Sister?" the guard lowered his weapon slightly. "Out here? In the rot?"
"The Light goes where the shadow is deepest," Miriam recited a verse from their own scripture.
The guard relaxed. He signaled for the gate to open.
"Come in, Sister. The Bishop is at prayer, but the Quartermaster will feed you. Your men can stay in the holding pen."
"They are my bonded guardians," Miriam said firmly. "They stay with me."
The guard shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just don't cause trouble."
They walked in.
The camp was organized. Clean. It smelled of incense and roasting meat.
Miriam felt the gaze of hundreds of soldiers. But they didn't look at her with lust or malice. They looked with reverence. To them, she was a touch of grace in a hellhole.
She led her "prisoners" toward the medical tent.
Inside, rows of cots were filled with soldiers suffering from rot-fever and swamp-blindness.
A young acolyte in white robes looked up as they entered.
"Sister?" he asked, confused.
"I am here to assist," Miriam said, stepping into the role of the senior doctor. She walked past him, scanning the room.
She wasn't looking for patients.
She was looking for the Alchemical Storage.
She spotted it. A heavy chest in the corner, marked with the seal of the Apothecary.
She knew what was inside. Potions. Ether crystals. And potent sleeping drafts.
She turned to Kael, who was standing by the entrance, looking like a subdued thug.
She gave him a subtle nod.
Step one complete.
But as she reached for a basin of water to wash her hands, a shadow fell over the tent entrance.
The flap was pushed aside.
The man in the golden robes entered. The Bishop.
The air in the tent grew heavy. The Ether pressure coming off him was immense. Silver-rank. Maybe Gold.
He was tall, with a face that was too smooth, too perfect. His eyes were like polished coins.
He looked at the soldiers. He looked at the acolyte.
Then, his gaze locked on Miriam.
He didn't smile. He sniffed the air.
"A new Sister," the Bishop said. His voice was melodic, beautiful.
He walked toward her. He didn't look at her sash. He looked at her soul.
"But you smell strange, child," the Bishop whispered, stopping inches from her.
He leaned in.
"You smell of... fungus."
Miriam froze. The residue of the Ghost-Mold. The energy she had eaten.
The Bishop's eyes narrowed.
"And," he added, his voice dropping to a hiss, "Why does your soul feel like it has teeth?"
Miriam's hand drifted toward the scalpel on the tray beside her.
"I have been working in the swamps, Your Grace," she said, bowing her head to hide her eyes. "The rot clings to everything."
The Bishop studied her. The silence stretched, tight as a bowstring. Kael tensed by the door, ready to spring.
Then, the Bishop smiled. It was a terrifying, benevolent smile.
"True," he said. "The rot is insidious. Come to my tent tonight, Sister. We shall pray together. I shall... cleanse you."
He turned and swept out of the tent.
Miriam let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
"He knows," she whispered to Kael.
"He suspects," Kael corrected. "If he knew, we'd be dead."
"We have until tonight," Miriam said. She looked at the chest of potions. "Tonight, I don't just put the camp to sleep."
She picked up the scalpel. The metal was cold and sharp.
"Tonight, we take the artifact," she said. "And if the Bishop tries to 'cleanse' me..."
She looked at her reflection in the steel blade.
"I will show him that a disease can kill a priest just as easily as a beggar."
She turned to the first patient, a boy with a festering leg wound.
"Now," she said, her voice shifting back to the gentle tone of the healer. "Let's get to work. We need to keep up appearances."
She placed her hands on the soldier. She began to heal.
But this time, as she pulled the Ether from the air, she didn't just filter it. She braided it. She hid a small, dormant seed of her own energy inside the soldier's healed flesh.
A trigger.
If things went wrong... she would have hostages. Not bound by rope, but bound by their own biology.
She moved to the next bed.
She was the Supreme Healer in the making. And she w