Sol Song came back to the infirmary the next morning with her sleeve pushed down and her face arranged in the particular expression of someone who has decided not to be worried.
"The itching stopped," Sol said. "So that's good, right?"
Vera looked at her arm. She didn't ask permission before pushing the sleeve up to the elbow, which she knew was rude and did not correct. The grey band had extended. Not by much — two millimeters, maybe three — but it had extended, and the color had deepened from ash-grey to something closer to charcoal. The skin had a slight texture now, like paper that has gotten damp and dried wrong.
"Yes," Vera said. "That's good."
She wrapped it with fresh gauze. Her hands were steady. Her right hand was cold.
"You're doing a thing with your face," Sol said.
"I'm concentrating."
"You do it when you're thinking. The healers at Dark Flame used to do it too. Before they said something was nothing."
Vera tied off the gauze. She did not look up. "I'll check it again tomorrow."
Sol pulled her sleeve down. "Is it something?"
Vera looked up then. Sol Song, up close, had a way of being direct that Vera had always clocked as arrogance and was now not sure about. She was looking at Vera the way she had looked at her on the first night — open, slightly younger than her rank.
"The itching stopping is a good sign," Vera said. "Come back tomorrow."
* * *
She spent the afternoon in the filing room.
Dawn Bell's medical records were kept on paper — an old-fashioned choice, one she had made a note of on day one. Paper meant no network access. Paper meant she could read them without leaving a log.
She pulled every chart for every patient she had treated. Fourteen of them. She laid them out in chronological order, Pak first, and she mapped the decay timeline.
Pak: eleven days ago. Grey ring visible in chart, noted by day-shift healer, referred to senior staff. The referral was still pending — nobody had followed up.
Lin: nine days ago. Numbness in two fingers, discoloration at treatment site. Still under observation.
The others: eight, seven, six, five days ago. Each one she turned over carefully. Most had no notes yet. A few had small observations: patient reported unusual sensation at treatment site in one, minor discoloration in another.
The timeline was consistent. The grey appeared approximately nine to eleven days after contact.
She was on day eleven for Pak. She was on day six for Sol.
She thought about the decay spreading through Pak's wound, slow and patient and constant, and she thought about the fourteen charts in her hands, and she thought: I need more time.
She needed to understand how far it spread. She needed to know if it stopped on its own, or if it continued until it reached something vital. She needed to know if she could reverse it.
She did not yet know any of those things.
* * *
She was still in the filing room when her phone buzzed.
Unknown number. Text only.
I know what you did in Ash Valley.
She stood very still. The fluorescent lights hummed. The filing room was empty, which it usually was at this hour.
She typed back: Wrong number.
The reply came in eight seconds.
Grey-Bone Lizard. Boss chamber, A-rank Rift. You were the only survivor.
She put the phone face-down on the counter and breathed. She counted to five. Then she picked the phone back up.
What do you want.
The response took longer this time. She waited, watching the three dots appear and disappear.
Not your enemy. Information trade. I know the sixth name.
Vera's jaw tightened. She looked at the door — still closed, no movement in the corridor. She typed:
Prove it.
Another pause.
You wrote six slots in a notes app. Slot 6 is blank. You've been running it since day four — the night you woke up with the sound of stone cracking.
She had not told anyone about the notes app. She had not told anyone about the Rift dream. She had not told anyone about any of this.
Who are you.
Someone who's been watching Dark Flame longer than you have. And someone who needs what's in your right hand.
She closed the messaging app. She opened it again. She stared at the conversation.
Then Sol Song walked past the filing room window, heading toward the exit with her sleeve pushed down, and Vera watched her go.
* * *
Zhou Quan arrived at Dawn Bell the next afternoon at exactly 14:00.
Vera was at the reception desk when he walked in, which was where she had positioned herself forty minutes earlier. She had a chart in her hands. She had been holding the chart for forty minutes, reading the same three lines.
He was younger than she'd expected. Mid-thirties, maybe. Good suit. The kind of posture that came from knowing people made room for you. He had two people with him — aides, or support staff, or something else, she didn't know — and he moved through the Dawn Bell entrance like he had been through it before and knew the dimensions.
The Guild Master of Dawn Bell, a B-rank named Feng who Vera had noticed was carefully unobservant about anything that wasn't his direct responsibility, intercepted Zhou Quan at the entrance and began the tour.
Vera watched from the desk. She watched Zhou Quan move through the infirmary — nodding at the equipment, asking Feng a question about staffing, making a note on his tablet. He had good hands. Clean. No rings.
He looked at the desk.
She looked down at the chart.
When she looked up again, he was talking to Feng about scheduling, and his eyes moved past her without stopping.
She breathed.
She had not decided anything yet. She had three days — no, two now — and she had not decided. The unknown contact knew the sixth name. Zhou Quan was in her building. Sol Song's arm was getting worse.
She was still holding the chart. She had been holding it so long that her right hand had started to feel warm — not warm, she corrected herself, that was wrong, that was just relative to the cold — and she shifted the chart to her left.
* * *
Her phone buzzed at 22:00.
Not the unknown number. Dawn Bell's medical alert system.
Patient Sol Song: requesting infirmary. Reason: pain, arm.
Vera was already in her coat. She had been sitting on the edge of her bunk for the past hour doing nothing in particular.
She went.
Sol was in exam room 3. She had her sleeve up before Vera even came through the door. The grey band had extended again — significantly, this time. The leading edge had passed her elbow and was moving up the inner forearm. The skin had that texture again, worse now, and when Vera pressed carefully around the edges, Sol made a sound and looked away.
"It hurts more than yesterday," Sol said. Her voice was steady, which Vera recognized as an effort.
"I know."
"You said it was a standard inflammation response."
Vera did not answer. She was measuring the band. Four centimeters past the elbow. She needed more data. She needed to understand the rate of progression, the path it was taking, whether it followed blood vessels or nerve pathways or something else entirely.
She needed to understand it and she had caused it and she did not know how to stop it.
"Vera," Sol said.
She looked up. Sol Song was watching her with the expression she'd had that first night, open and uncertain and younger than her rank, except now there was something else underneath it: the beginning of understanding.
"What did you do to my arm," Sol said.
It wasn't quite a question. It was the shape of someone putting something together.
Vera held the end of the measuring tape in her cold right hand and she looked at Sol Song, who had called her Battery, who had a grey band moving up her forearm toward her elbow, who was looking at her with the beginning of understanding.
"I need to do more research," Vera said.
Sol said nothing.
"I'm going to fix it," Vera said. "I'm going to find a way to fix it. I need you to come back tomorrow and not say anything to anyone until I've had more time."
The silence stretched.
"How long have you known," Sol said.
"Since day six."
Something shifted in Sol's face. She pulled her sleeve back down over the gauze. She looked at the wall for a moment, then back at Vera.
"Tomorrow," Sol said.
"Tomorrow."
Sol left. Vera sat in exam room 3 with the measuring tape in her hand and the fluorescent lights humming and the cold running through her right hand like a seam in stone.
Her phone was in her pocket. The unknown contact knew the sixth name.
She was going to need it.