Damian clenched his jaw so tightly it ached, a half-dozen curses spiraling silently behind his teeth as he fought to stay upright. His hands shook as he channeled the stabilizing magic, sweat stinging his eyes, but he refused to let the trembling show. Not now, not while this child’s life was a thread he alone held. Each heartbeat felt like a question he might answer wrong. He forced himself to breathe—one, two, in and out, matching the fragile rise and fall of the child’s chest.
Working with the careful intensity that had defined his practice for years, Damian reached deep, opening himself to her suffering—physical pain, yes, but also a deeper agony that clawed at his spirit. He felt the moment her soul had been breached: a violation that went beyond flesh, a kind of coldhorror that made his own scars throb in sympathy. Underneath it all, a thin thread of familiar magic pulsed—a signature he’d encountered before, but couldn’t place.
He nearly dropped to his knees as the borrowed trauma flooded him. The stolen years, the razor-edge of despair, the sensation of being nothing but pieces—he tasted it all, his own sense of self dissolving at the edges. But he anchored himself in the now, in the steady presence of Oris standing sentinel, in the rhythm of the girl’s heartbeat struggling to keep time.
Gradually, impossibly, Damian coaxed her fractured essence back toward coherence. It was like trying to knit together the threads of a torn tapestry while blind, guided only by instinct and the echo of pain. By the end, he was shaking, sweat-damp and hollow, but the child was breathing a little stronger. Her pulse thudded—weak, but there.
“She’ll live,” Damian said at last, swaying with exhaustion. “But whoever did this needs to be stopped before they hurt anyone else.”
Oris nodded, his hollow eyes reflecting an understanding that needed no words. He gathered the child with infinite care, cradling her against his chest. “I’ll keep looking,” he rasped, and Damian squeezed his arm, grateful for the promise.
When Oris had gone, the clinic felt too big, the silence pressing in from every side. Damian stood at his washbasin, scrubbing the girl’s blood from his hands until his knuckles stung. The water ran pink, then clear, but he kept washing, trying to banish the memory of deliberate cruelty—the metallic scent lingering, the sticky feeling between his fingers. No matter how many lives he saved, there was always a new horror waiting.
His exhaustion gave way to a familiar warmth that pressed close—subtle, at first, but then all-encompassing, settling around him like a second skin. He didn’t need to look to knowCael was there; the clinic always felt different in his presence, as if some unseen boundary had grown thin.
“You're here again,” Damian said softly to the air above the basin. “I can feel you watching.”
The temperature shifted slightly, a current of air at his back—more presence than movement, a careful attention that made his nerve endings sing.
“You were magnificent with the child,” Cael’s voice said, rougher than usual, the harmonics vibrating in Damian’s chest. “Fearless in the face of such corruption.”
A surprising warmth spread through Damian at the words, an old ache he’d long since taught himself to ignore. He swallowed hard, unsure when Cael’s approval had started to matter so much.
“Someone has to stand against that kind of cruelty,” Damian replied, voice barely above a whisper. “Children shouldn’t be used as raw material for anyone’s magic.”
“Most mortals would have turned away. The risk of exposure, of drawing the Time Exchange’s attention, would have been enough to deter them.”
“Most mortals don’t know what it feels like to have their soul torn apart,” Damian said, then paused, a bitter laugh escaping him. “Actually, in Varos, most people do know. They just don’t have the means to do anything about it.”
A long silence stretched between them, and Damian became hyperaware of the other’s presence—close enough to touch, if touch were possible, but restrained by cosmic law and mutual caution.
“Why do you heal them?” Cael asked quietly. “Truly. Not the answer you give others—the real reason.”
Damian hesitated. He’d given the surface answer a thousand times: Because it was right. Because someone had to. Becausehe couldn’t look away. But Cael’s tone demanded something deeper.
Damian hesitated, fingers twisting the towel. “Because… I want to believe that suffering isn’t the only thing that matters. That it isn’t the end of the story. When I heal someone, even for a little while, it’s proof the world can be kinder than it is. Maybe I’m just stubborn. Maybe I want to prove that pain isn’t all there is—that even in this city, even with everything stacked against us, I can give someone a little relief. Even if it costs me.”
He took a shaky breath, surprised by the truth in his own words. “I guess I heal them because I have to hope there’s still meaning in trying. Otherwise, what’s left?”
The quiet in the clinic pressed close, as if Cael was listening not just to words, but to the pain behind them.
“But your pain remains,” Cael said softly.
Damian nodded. “Yeah. It always does.”
That evening, Damian found himself restless, unable to settle into the routines that usually grounded him—herb sorting, wound cleaning, updating his coded journal. He kept moving, hands fidgeting with teacups and bandages, pacing the length of the room as if trying to outrun a tension building in the walls themselves.
“You're agitated,” Cael observed, voice coming from near the window.
“Bad day,” Damian replied, though that wasn’t the whole truth. The day had been brutal, yes—but his restlessness had less to do with horror, and more to do with a certain presence that had grown into something like anticipation.
“Tell me about it,” Cael said, and so Damian did: describing not just the child’s wounds, but his certainty that someone was experimenting with forbidden magic, his frustration that the city’s invisible rot always seemed one step ahead.
“The magical signature was familiar,” Damian finished. “Like I’ve encountered it before, but I can’t place where.”
“Your sensitivity is growing,” Cael noted, his voice vibrating closer than before. “The connection between us appears to be amplifying your natural abilities.”
Damian paused, teacup halfway to his lips. “Is that what this is? A connection?”
