—Natasha's POV—
The healer’s diagnosis became a living entity inside me, a cold, slithering certainty that coiled around my bones with every breath. I was no longer a person with a problem; I was a walking, ticking magical anomaly with an expiration date set by the moon. The summons, when it arrived, felt less like a request and more like a foregone conclusion, the next inevitable scene in a play whose script I had never read.
It was the healer, Elara, who delivered the message. She appeared in the doorway of the infirmary’s side room where I was sequestered, her silhouette backlit by the flickering firelight from the main chamber. Her expression, usually one of detached, clinical observation, held a new gravity.
“The Council of Elders requires your presence, child,” she said, her voice
