"Roxy! Roxy! Wake up this instant."
Hearing Plasma's screams made my eyes open. The sterile scent of the hospital, tallow candles and the heavy scent of dried herbs and woodsmoke.
I woke to the sound of wind howling against thick stone walls. My right side was a void of absolute darkness, wrapped in layers of rough, medicated linen that smelled of stinging peppermint and yarrow. The iron bolt was gone, but the emptiness where my eye had been throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache.
I tried to push myself up, but my body felt like it had been crushed under a castle gate. My right hand was bound in a wooden splint, wrapped tight with bandages soaked in poultices to save the mangled flesh. My leg, the one Dominik had shattered, was held straight by a heavy timber brace and thick leather straps, the bone set by a town's healer's rough hands.
I wasn't in a hospital. I was in a high-walled infirmary within a stone keep, the air cold enough to see my breath.
"Dominik..."
I tried to speak, but my throat, once slit and now stitched with fine silk thread, only produced a dry, ghostly rasp.
I tilted my head, my remaining green eye straining to adjust to the gloom. I wasn't alone.
Across the small, straw-strewn room, another pallet sat against the damp masonry. White lay there, her silver hair spilling across a rough wool pillow like spilled moonlight. She was stripped of her pristine white coat, wearing only a thin linen shift. I could see the heavy, crisscrossing bandages over her shoulders, covering the deep furrows where the steel had bitten into her back.
White looked fragile in the candlelight, a fallen knight stripped of her armor. But the steady, shallow rise and fall of her chest told me the truth: she had survived the butcher's blade.
We were miles away from the manor, hidden in the safety of some unnamed fortress. Dominik and his bandits were out there in the dark, likely celebrating their escape, thinking they had left two corpses behind in that kitchen.
I sank back into the straw, the cold of the stone walls seeping into my bones. My eye was gone, my hand was ruined, and my leg was broken, but as I watched the firelight dance on the ceiling, I knew the Blood Curse hadn't died with that arrow. It was just waiting, simmering in the dark, ready for the day we would find him again.
The heavy oak door of the infirmary creaked open, admitting a man clad in thick robes embroidered with the symbols of the Great Healers. He carried a tray of tinctures, but as his eyes landed on me, sitting up despite the timber brace on my leg, he nearly dropped his supplies.
"By the gods, you were at death's door when they brought you in. Your recovery... it is unnatural."
The head doctor stammered, rushing to the side of my cot. This is infact, the same doctor who healed my mana meter in the past and he is the one who treated Luck.
I looked at him with my one good eye, my voice still a ghost of its former self.
"Doc... how many days since I passed out?"
"Three days," he answered, his hands trembling slightly as he checked the bandages on my neck.
"Three days of fever and shadows. Most would have succumbed to the rot by now, but your heart refuses to still."
I nodded slowly. Three days. Three days for Dominik to vanish into the winds.
The doctor raised his hands, a soft, golden light beginning to pool in his palms. He began chanting a low, rhythmic incantation, preparing a traditional healing spell to close the jagged wounds beneath my linen wraps. I felt the warmth of the magic, but I knew the truth. Ordinary light spells would take weeks to knit my shattered femur and regrow the torn flesh of my hand. I didn't have weeks and plus, I was impatient.
"Doc, stop," I rasped, lifting my uninjured hand to halt him.
He blinked, the golden light flickering.
"Child, you are in no state to refuse treatment. The infection…"
"Do you have any spare blood? In bottles? In the cold cellar? Anywhere?"
The doctor's expression shifted from concern to a grim, clinical seriousness. He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes searching mine for signs of a concussion or the madness that often follows a traumatic blow to the skull. To him, the request was either a sick joke or the delirium of a dying girl.
"Roxy, you have lost a lot of blood, yes, but drinking it is not the cure. You are confused. The pain is clouding your mind."
"I am not mental, and I am not joking," I said,
I leaned forward despite the agonizing pull on my stitches. I let the veil drop. My mana meter is beyond zero, meaning I cannot fully activate my pain manipulation to numb the pain.
"I can heal these wounds. Completely. But I need the catalyst. I need blood."
The doctor froze. He looked into my remaining eye and saw something that didn't belong to a normal girl. He saw the predator, the ancient hunger, and the terrifying sincerity of a monster that was tired of being broken. The shock on his face was absolute, his mouth thinning into a hard line as he realized exactly what kind of patient he had been harboring.
"I see. Very well, Roxy. I shall see what the butchery has left."
Without another word, he turned and hurried from the room, leaving me alone in the flickering candlelight with the heavy silence of the keep.
The candlelight flickered low as a stray draft whistled through the stone embrasures, carrying the scent of pine and distant rain. A single beam of moonlight pierced the gloom, resting on the rough linen of my bed. It felt cold against my skin, a pale reminder of the night I had lost so much.
The heavy door creaked again, but it wasn't the doctor.
A woman stepped into the light, her movements graceful yet weary. She shared White's silver hair, though hers was woven with threads of grey and styled in a dignified braid. This was Snow, White's mother. Her eyes widened as she saw me sitting upright, my mangled hand resting against the timber brace of my leg.
"You're awake! The healers said your spirit was drifting in the gray mists. To see you sitting up... it is a miracle." she whispered, rushing to the side of my pallet
I looked away, my one good eye tracing the patterns in the straw floor. I tried to sound nonchalant, though my voice was still a sandpaper rasp.
"I suppose I was just lucky, Lady Snow."
Snow shook her head, her expression softening into one of profound, tearful gratitude. She reached out, gently placing a hand over my bandaged one.
"It wasn't luck. The gatekeeper, Carlos, told me what he could before he drifted off. You stood when no one else could. You fought that monster until your body gave out. Thank you, Roxy. Thank you for bringing my daughter back to me."
The word thank you hit me like a physical blow. The warmth in her voice felt undeserved, a golden light that only made my internal shadows darker. The stoic mask of the Butcher cracked, and the terrified girl underneath spilled out.
I choked out, the memories inside the manor flashes before my eyes, the maids laying dead in the basement, Miera's decapitated head, everything. my voice breaking.
"But the maids… I saw them, Snow. I saw them in the hallway... in the kitchen. They're all dead. Every single one."
The memory surged back, the smell of the flour mixed with copper, the sound of the silence after the screaming stopped, and the mocking laughter of Dominik as he stepped over their bodies. My vision blurred as hot tears tracked down my cheeks, soaking into the bandages over my missing eye.
"I didn't save them, I had all this power... this strength... and I still let him kill them. I failed."
I sobbed, my shoulders shaking with a grief I had been trying to outrun since the manor.
Before I could spiral further into the dark, I felt a pair of arms wrap around me. Snow didn't pull away from my blood-stained history; she drew me into a firm, maternal embrace, pressing my head against her shoulder.
"Listen to me, Roxy, you are not a god. You are a girl who was thrust into a nightmare. You cannot carry the weight of every life stolen by an evil man. You didn't kill them… he did. But because of you, the light in this room hasn't gone out. Because of you, my daughter still draws breath."
She pulled back just enough to look me in the eye, wiping a tear from my cheek with her thumb.
"You did your best, child. And in a world this dark, your best was more than enough. Let the guilt go. You need that strength for the healing that comes next."
I sat there in the quiet of the keep, the moonlight and the mother's embrace offering a small, fragile peace I hadn't felt since before the crosswalk. For a moment, I wasn't a monster or a hero of my hometown. I was just Roxy, finally allowed to mourn.
The heavy thud of the infirmary door announced the doctor's return. He carried a large, pewter basin, the surface of the dark crimson liquid inside rippling with every hurried step. The metallic scent hit me instantly, triggering a frantic, primal thrumming in my chest.
"Roxy! Countess Snow! May you step back a little."
Snow stepped back, her eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and dawning horror. The doctor set the basin on my lap, his face set in a grim, stony mask.
"If this is what it takes to save a life, then let the gods judge me."
I didn't hesitate. I gripped the sides of the basin with my trembling, uninjured hand and drank. I drank until the world turned red, until the cold iron of the blood washed away the taste of death and failure.
[Drain Activated Extraction Completed consumed one liter of blood]
The effect was instantaneous. A violent heat surged through my limbs, radiating from my stomach to my furthest extremities. Beneath the bandages, I felt the sickening yet miraculous sensation of muscle fibers knitting together like weaving silk.
I reached up with my teeth, catching the edge of the linen wraps on my right hand.
"Wait! You cannot remove those yet, The flesh is still raw, you'll cause a hemorrhage!"
He reached my arm. Then, I snapped my head toward him. My remaining green eye flared with a cold, predatory light that froze the air in the room.
"Don't touch me, I'll handle this"
I growled, my voice no longer a rasp, but a sharp, resonant blade.
The doctor recoiled, his hand dropping as if he had been burned.
I yanked the bandages free with my teeth. As the blood-soaked cloth fell away, the doctor and Snow let out synchronized gasps of pure terror. The hand that had been a mangled ruin of split skin and exposed tendons just moments ago was now pristine. The skin was pale, smooth, and unscarred, as if the blade had never touched it.
"Healing magic… I have never seen a spell of such potency. To regrow tissue in seconds..."
The doctor was trembling but I didn't correct him. I didn't tell him it wasn't magic, but a human skill I possess that demanded a high price.
Next, I reached for the heavy timber brace on my leg. With a surge of strength, I snapped the leather straps and tossed the wood aside. I gripped the blood-crusted bandages over my thigh and tore them away. Through the gap in my hospital shift, they saw the impossible: the jagged, white edge of the femur that had been protruding through my skin was gone. The bone had retracted, snapping back into place and sealing the wound behind it without even leaving a scab.
"Lord have mercy, healing magic during this extreme state. Unbelievable, Roxy."
I stood up, testing my weight. The leg held.
However, as I reached for the bandage over my right eye, the heat in my body began to cool. I peeled back the linen, hoping for the same miracle, but I was met with only the cold draft of the room hitting the hollow socket.
"Huh?" I was confused
"Roxy, your eye is gone. Your right and vivid-red eye is gone."
The Blood Curse responded to trauma, knitting flesh and mending bone… the low-level mechanical repairs of a predator's body. But an organ as complex as an eye, completely destroyed by an enchanted iron bolt, was beyond its reach. Only high-level celestial magic or a miracle from the gods could regrow a lost eye.
I looked into the small, polished silver mirror on the doctor's tray. A pale girl looked back. Her left eye was a vibrant, defiant green. Her right was a dark, empty void, surrounded by faint, silver scarring.
"It didn't work," Snow whispered, her heart breaking for me.
I touched the scar, my fingers steady.
"It worked enough. I can walk. I can fight."
I turned toward the window, the moonlight reflecting in my one good eye. Dominik thought he had blinded me. He thought he had broken my body. But as the strength of the animal blood settled into my marrow, I realized I didn't need two eyes to find a man who left a trail of corpses behind him.