Just A Healer
1552 Words
Hannah | The Summoned Healer From The Mortal World
Kraios University was nothing like the world I came from.
Its stone halls echoed with old magic and older secrets. Spires scraped the sky, their tips lost in drifting mist. Even the gardens felt unreal—too perfect, too still, like someone had carved a memory into the earth and whispered, grow.
And yet… here I was.
A girl from nowhere. A summoned healer with a borrowed life and a power I still didn’t understand.
I lived in the east wing dorms, tucked between the Arcane Library and the medicinal greenhouse. The room was small but warm. Clean sheets, steady candles, a window overlooking the willow trees. A space meant to feel like safety.
But safety was an illusion in this world.
Especially for me.
Most days were filled with study—herbology, spell theory, the ethics of sacred healing. Most nights, I couldn’t sleep.
The power inside me pulsed like a second heartbeat, aching beneath my skin. It wasn’t just healing. It was more. And no one—not even I—knew what it was truly capable of.
Except maybe him.
Lark.
My assigned guide.
He was… strange. Too charming for his own good. Always a little too close, too eager to make me laugh. With hair like midnight and eyes like shattered emeralds, he had the kind of beauty that drew stares.
He used it like a weapon.
But underneath it all, there was something sharp in him. Something caged.
I didn’t ask.
I didn’t want to know.
And yet, the longer I stayed in this world, the more I realized: curiosity here was a dangerous thing.
The day everything changed started the way most of them did—with Lark kicking open my door before dawn.
“Get up, star-girl. We’ve got royal business today.”
I groaned into my pillow. “It’s not even light out.”
He grinned, tossing a black cloak onto the edge of my bed. “Kraios Palace. Someone’s dying, or bleeding, or having a royal tantrum. Either way, you’re needed.”
I sat up slowly, heart skipping. “Palace?”
“Don’t look so excited,” he teased, eyes gleaming. “It’s probably just an old noble who forgot they’re mortal.”
I dressed quickly, my nerves buzzing. The cloak was soft, lined with silver thread. Not mine. Far too elegant for a student.
I didn’t ask where he got it.
Lark always had a way of slipping past rules no one else could.
The carriage ride was quiet, save for the occasional creak of the wheels and the faint rustle of trees overhead.
The palace loomed ahead, a fortress of silver stone and obsidian towers. It was beautiful—but in the way a blade is beautiful right before it cuts.
When we entered, the guards didn’t question us. Just nodded at Lark and stepped aside.
He walked with too much ease for someone inside a palace. Like he belonged. Like the walls remembered him. He is the Second Prince, that's to be expected.
My boots echoed on marble as we crossed a hallway lined with ancestral portraits—stern men and elegant women with eyes that followed.
I didn’t speak. My throat was tight.
And then I felt it.
Cold.
Not the kind that brushes skin.
The kind that wraps around your lungs. Coils down your spine.
Watches.
I turned before I could stop myself.
And saw him.
He stood at the far end of the corridor, half-cast in shadow, but unmistakably real.
Tall. Still. Terrible in his beauty.
Jet-black hair curled slightly over his collar. Broad shoulders. His black tunic was simple, but the gold embroidery at his cuffs glinted like firelight. His posture was effortless. Regal.
And his eyes—
Emerald. Sharp. So much like Lark’s… and yet utterly different.
Lark’s eyes sparkled with mischief.
His were cold-cut stone. Pure calculation.
I couldn't move.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t smile.
But he saw me.
Really saw me.
My pulse spiked violently.
Lark didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did. But he only said, “Ignore him. He’s always brooding.”
“Who… is that?” I managed, my voice barely above a whisper.
Lark’s steps didn’t falter. “My older brother.”
I froze.
“You mean… he’s—”
“Crown Prince Adam Kraios,” he said casually. “The future king. Or tyrant, depending who you ask.”
I didn’t answer.
Because my entire body was still reacting.
Like a warning had just been carved into my bones.
I forced my gaze away.
But I could still feel him.
His presence clung like shadow. His silence louder than any threat.
He didn’t look at me again.
He didn’t need to.
Because something inside me already knew—
He was danger. And he would ruin me.
And part of me wanted to let him.
—
I told myself it was nothing.
Just a flicker of instinct. A phantom reaction to a beautiful man with a blade for a soul.
But it lingered.
The echo of his stare. The frost of it. The way my name felt like it was already on his tongue even though he’d never said it aloud.
And now, standing in a sunlit chamber inside Kraios Palace, I tried to forget.
Tried to focus.
Tried to heal.
The noble before me was old—one of the Crown’s war council, I’d heard. He was pale, drenched in sweat, clutching his side like it might fall open. The wound wasn’t fresh, but it festered like a curse had kissed it.
Lark stood at my side, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Can you help him?” one of the guards asked, voice taut.
I ignored the question. Instead, I knelt.
The old man’s breath was shallow. Pained.
I pressed my fingers to his chest, just over the heart. Closed my eyes. Let the power come.
Warmth bloomed through me.
Golden. Gentle.
But this time, it wasn’t soft. It was furious. Like something inside me had been waiting—aching—to be released.
The light poured from my hands, slow and sure. It wrapped around the man’s body like silk, glowing beneath his skin. His wounds tightened. The fever faded. His breath deepened.
When I opened my eyes, he was already asleep—healed, resting.
I exhaled slowly, heart pounding.
And then—
The room shifted.
The air turned cold again.
Not the kind that comes with fear.
The kind that comes with him.
I stood up before I even saw him. My body felt him before my mind did.
Crown Prince Adam Kraios stood at the threshold, flanked by silence, carved from steel and smoke. His emerald gaze pinned me in place.
Still regal. Still cold.
Still watching like he wanted to unravel me just to see what color my soul bled.
“Well,” he said, voice low, silk-strung iron. “Is she the Saint they summoned?”
My spine straightened, instinctively on edge.
“Or is she just another glorified healer?”
Lark shifted beside me. “Adam—”
But I stepped forward before he could finish.
The prince’s gaze didn’t flicker. “Well?”
I raised my chin. “Is that how you speak to someone who just saved your advisor’s life?”
“I speak how I choose,” he replied, his voice calm. Dangerous. “Especially when it concerns magic that no one understands. Tell me—did they teach you to shine like that in your little classes? Or is it something else?”
I took a sharp breath.
The insult wasn’t in the words.
It was in the way he said shine like it was a sin.
Like I was a fraud.
Or worse—an accident.
“I didn’t ask for this power,” I said tightly. “And I certainly didn’t ask for your approval.”
“Then don’t act like you deserve it.”
Something snapped.
“Deserve?” I took a step closer, ignoring Lark’s warning glance. “I didn’t come here to impress you, Your Highness. I came here because someone was dying.”
His eyes flared slightly. “And what happens when your magic chooses wrong? When it saves the wrong life, or kills the right one?”
“Then maybe it’ll be kinder than your politics.”
His jaw tightened.
A slow, dangerous smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Like I’d just offered him a new weapon—and he couldn’t wait to use it.
“You’re bold,” he said quietly. “Reckless.”
“I’m breathing,” I shot back. “You’ll have to get used to it.”
We stared at each other.
The silence stretched.
Hot. Sharp. Crawling beneath my skin.
And then he turned away.
Dismissed me like I was nothing.
But his voice followed me as he walked toward the door. “I’ll be watching, healer. Closely. You may not be the Saint. But something tells me I can use you.”
And just like that—he vanished into the shadows again.
But I was still burning.
Still shaking.
Because part of me hated him.
And the other part?
The other part already wanted to know what it would feel like to burn with him.
- Writer
