The leader's resolve crumbled like wet parchment. “Some noble bitch from the floating districts,” he whispered, the words spilling out like blood from a wound. “Pays good coin for healers, but we ain't supposed to know her name. Got some manner of operation running in the old warehouses by the harbor. Needs your kind for... for something that requires fresh blood and steady hands.”
Damian nodded, filing the information away. Another wealthy predator harvesting the desperate for their own ends. Now they were collecting healers specifically. The implications made his stomach churn.
“How many others has she taken?”
“Don't know true. Maybe eight or ten? We just bring 'em in, don't ask what happens after.” The man was sweating freely now, his voice cracking with desperation. “Look, I told you what you wanted. May I take my leave?”
Damian considered the request, weighing mercy against necessity. These men had tried to abduct him, would have delivered him to whatever fate their mistress had planned. But they were also small prey, expendable muscle hired for a single task.
“Run,” he said finally. “Leave the city before the morning bells. If I find you in Varos on the morrow, I'll finish what I started.”
The leader didn't need to be told twice. He stumbled over his fallen companions and fled into the night, leaving behind the reek of his own fear and the groaning remnants of his crew.
Damian stood alone in the stinking alley, surrounded by broken men and the consequences of his own choices. His hands shook as the battle-fever faded, but not from fear or exhaustion. From the terrible realization that he was becoming something his patients wouldn't recognize—something that could transform healing into weapon, mercy into threat, compassion into calculated cruelty.
The man he'd subjected to weaponized pain was still twitching on the cobblestones, his consciousness scattered by sensory torment. He'd live, probably, but he'd never forget what it felt like to have his own suffering turned against him.
Whatever noble was hunting healers, whatever she needed them for, it was connected to the chaos consuming Varos. And now she knew he existed, knew what he was capable of.
The hunt had begun in earnest.
The Market Underspine sprawled beneath the city like a secret infection, tunnels carved from ancient drainage channels and expanded by decades of illegal enterprise. The air down here was thick with moisture and the smell of too many people living in too little space. Vendors hawked goods that couldn't be sold in legitimate markets—stolen time-crystals, forged identification papers, weapons that hummed with illegal magic.
But more valuable than any physical commodity were the whispered rumors that passed from stall to stall like viruses seeking new hosts. Damian navigated the crowded tunnels with his white cane and enhanced senses, following familiar paths toward a particular stall where information was traded with the same care most people reserved for precious metals.
The vendor was a man called Lennar—not his real name, but names were fluid currency in the Underspine. His scarred hands, reminders of his former profession as a time-broker, shook slightly as he poured tea from a battered metal pot.
“Healer,” Lennar greeted him with genuine warmth, though his voice carried undertones of worry. “Dangerous times to be walking the tunnels alone.”
“Dangerous times everywhere,” Damian replied, settling onto the wooden crate that served as customer seating. “What are you hearing about the Hollow outbreaks?”
“Bad things. Worse than bad.” Lennar's voice dropped to a whisper that barely carried over the tunnel's ambient noise. “Someone's not just collecting stolen time anymore—they're weaponizing it. Building something that could rewrite the entire relationship between life and death.”
Damian felt ice settle in his stomach. “What kind of experiments?”
“The kind that trap souls between states until they go mad from existing in too many places at once.” Lennar leaned closer, his scarred fingers tracing nervous patterns on the wooden counter. “Someone's figured out how to harvest the boundary between life and death. Use it as raw material for magic that shouldn't exist.”
When Damian carefully inquired about soulcraft and deathbound anchors—theoretical research, he claimed, for a patient with unusual symptoms.
“Ancient magic, that. Dangerous beyond measure. If you've touched something divine, boy, it will want you forever. Even if claiming you means breaking you into pieces too small to heal.”
“Hypothetically,” Damian said carefully, “what would happen to someone bound to a cosmic entity? Someone who found themselves caring about a force of nature?”
Lennar was quiet for a long moment, studying Damian's face with eyes that had learned to read between the lines of casual questions. “Hypothetically? They'd be fucked six ways to Sunday. Cosmic entities don't love the way humans do. They possess. They consume. They remake you in their image until there's nothing left of who you were before.”
“And if the entity was changing too? Becoming more human?”
“Then you'd both be fucked. Because something would notice the changes and move to correct them. Cosmic order doesn't tolerate anomalies, boy. It burns them out like infections.”
The words followed Damian back through the twisting tunnels, echoing in his mind as he climbed toward street level. The wooden talisman was warm against his palm where it rested in his pocket, and even here, surrounded by the chaos of the underground market, he could feel Cael's attention like a distantstar—present but unreachable, watching but refusing to come closer.
Back in his clinic, Damian settled into his evening routine with deliberate normalcy—banking the fire, organizing supplies for tomorrow's patients, checking the protective wards that kept the worst of the chaos at bay. But the familiar tasks felt hollow tonight, performed more out of habit than necessity.
As he hung his coat on the peg by the door, Damian spoke to the empty air with deliberate provocation.
“I know you're listening. I know you care. If you're going to haunt me, at least have the courage to be honest about why.”
The silence that answered felt heavier than usual, pregnant with unspoken responses. Damian could almost hear Cael's voice in the spaces between heartbeats, could almost feel the weight of words that wanted to be spoken but were held back by fear and cosmic protocol.
