I didn't fail.
I turn back toward the table. He's still lying there, face-down, silent. The luminous seams are glowing softly beneath his slate-gray skin, pulsing with a steady, healthy rhythm.
But then he shifts.
It's deliberate this time. His massive frame rolls slightly, just enough that I can see the edge of his profile, and his eyes are open—dark, intense, framed by sharp features carved from stone—and they're looking directly at me.
The moment our gazes lock, somethingancientflares behind those eyes.
Not just recognition.
Something deeper.
Something primal.
Something that reaches into my chest andpulls, like an invisible thread connecting us, like my body suddenly understands something my brain hasn't caught up to yet. The air between us crackles with it—a pull so immediate and overwhelming that my breath catches in my throat, that my heart stutters in my chest, that every nerve ending in my body lights up with awareness.
His crystalline tracery ignites.
Not the soft, steady glow from before. This is different. Brighter. More urgent. The light spreads across his chest and shoulders in waves, illuminating the stone beneath his skin likemolten gold, like his entire body is responding to something it recognizes, something itneeds.
And I feel it too.
In my chest. In my stomach. In the base of my spine.
A strange, electric awareness that makes no sense and every sense simultaneously, that makes me want to step closer and run away at the same time, that makes my skin prickle with heat that has nothing to do with the volcanic lamps.
His eyes don't leave mine.
Dark. Intense. Burning with something I don't have a name for.
And then he blinks.
The moment shatters.
His expression returns to ice-cold professional detachment, and the luminous seams settle back to their steady, healthy glow, and I'm left standing there with my heart pounding and my hands trembling and absolutely no idea what the fuck just happened.
But I saw it. I felt it. And I know he did too.
I don't know what that was.
I don't want to know what that was.
It was probably just adrenaline. Just the physical response of his body to the breakthrough. Just my own nervous system misfiring after an intense session.
That's all it was.
That has to be all it was.
I take a breath—the eucalyptus-scented air fills my lungs, thick and warm—and I force my voice to sound steady, professional, like I didn't just experience something that felt like the ground shifting beneath my feet.
"Okay," I say. "That's the initial assessment. Your left shoulder blade was severely calcified, but I was able to break up the primary adhesion. The wing joint is still locked, but thetension is reduced. I'm going to need at least three more sessions to fully address the petrification, and you're going to need to start doing some kind of mobility work on your own time. I don't care if you're made of stone—if you don't move, you're going to lock up again."
Silence.
He doesn't respond.
He doesn't move.
