By the seventh healing, I was stumbling.
The light came harder each time, requiring more from a well I had not known the depth of until I felt it draining. Each patient I touched pulled something out of me– not blood, not breath, but something quieter. An essence. Seren grew dimmer with every passing, her warmth retreating further into my bones.
But the patients lived.
One by one, the critical cases opened their eyes, drew clean breaths, and returned to the living. A Delta twice my size wept as color flooded his face. A mender clutched my wrist after I healed her, unable to speak, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her cheeks.
And at every bedside, there were witnesses.
Word had spread through the lower level faster than the disease itself. The King's mate was he
