The cancer cells surrendered to Kova's light like soldiers finally allowed to lay down arms they'd never wanted to carry. He knelt beside the hospital bed, silver radiance pouring from his palms in waves that made the air taste of ozone and ancient winter. The girl beneath his touch—Hazel, seventeen, acute myeloid leukemia stage four—arched as her bone marrow remembered its original purpose.
"Your blood is learning to sing again," he murmured, watching through sight that operated on multiple planes simultaneously. At sixteen, he could see the cancer's history written in damaged DNA, could trace the exact moment healthy cells had forgotten their purpose and turned traitor. The malignancy retreated from his power not with violence but with something approaching relief, as if the corrupted c
