The medical tent was a theatre of quiet suffering.
Outside, the camp of the Sun-Eaters was a machine of discipline. Patrols marched in perfect rhythm; the clatter of steel greaves on stone echoed off the temple walls. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of lavender incense, burned to mask the copper tang of blood and the sour reek of swamp fever.
Miriam washed her hands in a basin of holy water. The liquid was cold. It stung her skin, a subtle rejection of the foreign Ether she carried.
She had treated forty men in three hours.
Broken ankles from hidden roots. Leeches the size of forearms that had to be burned off. Fever-dreams caused by inhaling the wrong pollen.
She had healed them all. And in each one, she had left a deposit.
It wasn't a curse. It was a knot.
When a Healer stitches a wound, they leave a trace of their own energy to guide the cells. It usually dissipates in an hour. Miriam, however, had twisted that energy. She had wrapped it around the vagus nerve of every soldier she touched.
It was a biological trigger. A dormant seizure waiting for a command.
"You look pale, Sister," the young acolyte said, stepping up beside her with a tray of fresh bandages. He was a boy of sixteen, eager and blind to the world. "You should rest. His Grace, Bishop Valerius, does not like his servants to be weary."
Miriam dried her hands on a rough towel. She looked at the boy. His name was Thomas. He had a kindness in his aura that made her stomach turn.
"I am fine, Thomas," she said softly. "Where are my... guardians? The prisoners?"
"In the pen outside," Thomas said. "They are being fed. The Quartermaster says the big one—the one with the scar—eats like a wolf."
Miriam nodded. "Good. Wolves need meat."
She walked to the tent flap and peered out. The holding pen was a simple wooden enclosure near the supply wagons. Kael was sitting on the ground, leaning against the fence. To anyone else, he looked defeated. To Miriam, he looked like a coiled spring.
He caught her eye. He tapped his left wrist. Time?
Miriam held up three fingers. Three hours? No. Room 3? No.
She touched her throat, then pointed to the Bishop's tent—a towering structure of white silk glowing from within.
The meeting.
Kael gave a barely perceptible nod. He understood. The plan hinged on the Bishop.
"Sister Miriam?"
The voice was deep, resonant, and devoid of warmth.
Miriam turned.
Two soldiers in full plate armor stood at the entrance of the medical tent. Their helmets were fashioned in the shape of sunbursts, obscuring their faces. They were Paladins. Silver-rank.
"His Grace summons you," the lead Paladin said.
Miriam felt a spike of adrenaline. It was time.
"I am ready," she said.
She smoothed her sash. She checked her internal reservoir. She was at sixty percent capacity. It would have to be enough.
She followed the Paladins out into the humid night.
The Bishop's tent was not a tent; it was a mobile cathedral.
The floor was covered in thick rugs woven in the capital of Solis. The air was cool, conditioned by ice-crystals in brass bowls. In the center of the room, a massive altar of gold and ivory dominated the space.
Behind the altar stood Bishop Valerius.
He was not wearing his golden robes now. He wore a simple white tunic that left his arms bare. His skin was flawless, glowing with a faint, pearlescent luminescence. He looked like a statue brought to life by a wish.
He was reading a scroll. He did not look up when Miriam entered.
The Paladins stayed outside. The flap closed, sealing them in.
"Kneel," Valerius said.
His voice was soft, but the command carried the weight of a hammer.
Miriam knelt on the rug. She kept her head bowed.
"You are from the North," Valerius said, rolling the scroll closed. "Rantean Empire. I can hear the steel in your accent."
"I am a wanderer, Your Grace," Miriam said to the floor. "The borders mean little to those who serve the sick."
"A pretty sentiment."
Valerius walked around the altar. He moved without sound. One moment he was in front of her, the next he was behind her.
Miriam felt his hand land on her head.
It was hot. Not the warmth of a fever, but the burning, dry heat of a desert noon.
"But you are a liar, Miriam."
Miriam's breath hitched. She didn't move.
"A Sister of Solis carries the Light in her core," Valerius whispered, his fingers tangling in her hair. "It is a clean, orderly energy. But you... inside you, there is a swamp. There is rot. There is a hunger that belongs to a beast, not a woman."
His grip tightened. He pulled her head back, forcing her to look up at him.
His eyes were terrifying. They had no pupils. They were pools of liquid gold.
"Who are you?" he asked. "And why have you brought three killers into my camp?"
Miriam stared into the light. Her eyes watered. The heat from his hand was searing her scalp.
"I am a doctor," she choked out. "And I am here because... I need the Heart."
Valerius paused. He tilted his head.
"The Heart?" A smile touched his lips. It was sharp. "You seek the Saint's Heart? The artifact?"
He laughed. It was a clear, bell-like sound that sent shivers down her spine.
"You think a scavenger like you can touch a relic of the Platinum Saints? It would turn you to ash."
He released her. Miriam fell forward onto her hands, gasping. The spot on her head where he had touched her felt raw.
Valerius walked back to the altar. He picked up a small silver box.
"The Heart is not for you," he said. "It is for the purification of this land. We will use it to burn the swamp. We will boil the water, kill the Drowners, and sterilize the earth so that civilized men may build here."
He turned back to her.
"But first, I must sterilize you."
He raised his hand. The air in the tent began to vibrate.
Miriam felt the pressure instantly. It was Gold-rank pressure. The Ether in the room became heavy, pressing down on her shoulders like a physical weight.
Light gathered in Valerius's palm. It wasn't a fireball. It was a lance of concentrated photon energy.
"Hold still," Valerius said. "I am going to burn the fungus from your soul. It will hurt. But pain is the mother of piety."
Miriam looked at the light.
She knew what it was. Holy Smite. It targeted "corruption." Since she had absorbed the Ghost-Mold, her signature was corrupt. This spell would boil her blood.
She had seconds.
She didn't try to shield. A Healer had no shield.
She didn't try to run. He was faster.
She reached out with her mind.
The seeds.
She felt them. Forty small knots of energy, pulsing in the bodies of the soldiers in the medical tent, fifty yards away.
She found the acolyte, Thomas. The sweet boy. She had patted his shoulder on the way out. She had left a seed in his trapezius muscle.
Forgive me, Thomas.
Miriam clenched her mental fist.
BLOOM.
Outside, in the medical tent, Thomas screamed.
It wasn't a human scream. It was the sound of a vocal cord being shredded by sudden, violent muscle spasms.
He dropped the tray of bandages. His body arched backward, his spine snapping into a bow.
Simultaneously, forty wounded soldiers sat up in their cots. Their eyes rolled back. Their mouths opened in silent, synchronized gasps.
The seeds Miriam had planted didn't just cause pain. They disrupted the body's equilibrium. They fired every nerve ending at once.
Chaos erupted.
Soldiers fell out of beds, thrashing. Some began to vomit uncontrollably. Others clawed at their own skin, hallucinating bugs that weren't there.
The screams tore through the silent camp like a siren.
"My leg! It's burning!"
"Get them off me! Get them off!"
The guards outside the tent panicked. "Medic! The patients are seizing!"
In the Bishop's tent, Valerius flinched.
His concentration broke. The lance of light in his hand flickered.
He looked toward the tent flap. "What is that?"
It was the opening Miriam needed.
She didn't attack him. She attacked the environment.
The tent was made of silk. Silk is organic. It comes from a worm.
Miriam slammed her palms onto the rug.
Grow.
She poured her Ether into the fibers of the rug and the tent walls. She targeted the microscopic remnants of the silk-worm DNA that still lingered in the fabric.
It was impossible science, but magic ignored physics.
The rug beneath Valerius's feet exploded.
Thick, white strands of raw silk erupted from the weave. They lashed out like whips, wrapping around the Bishop's ankles.
"What?!" Valerius shouted, looking down.
The walls of the tent groaned. The fabric thickened, turning into a cocoon. The structural poles snapped.
"You dare?" Valerius roared.
He released a pulse of light. The silk binding his legs incinerated instantly.
But Miriam was already moving.
She lunged—not at him, but at the silver box on the altar.
She grabbed it. It was cold.
"Thief!" Valerius snarled.
He pointed a finger at her. A beam of light, thin as a needle, shot toward her heart.
Miriam threw herself sideways.
The beam grazed her shoulder.
It didn't cut. It erased.
A chunk of flesh the size of a coin simply vanished from her deltoid. Cauterized instantly. No blood. Just a hole and the smell of cooked meat.
Miriam swallowed a scream. She rolled, coming up to her feet, clutching the box to her chest.
The tent was collapsing around them, the "living" silk trying to strangle the structure.
"You cannot run from the sun!" Valerius yelled. He began to float, his body glowing so bright it was painful to look at.
He was preparing a blast that would level the tent and everyone inside it.
Miriam needed an exit.
She reached for the connection to Kael.
Now! she projected the thought, hoping the bond she had formed when healing him was strong enough to carry a telepathic shout.
In the holding pen, Kael stood up.
He heard nothing but the screams from the medical tent. But he saw the Bishop's tent shuddering. He saw the white silk turning grey and lumpy.
"Showtime," Kael grinned.
He looked at the wooden fence.
He looked at the guard who was distracted by the chaos in the medical tent.
"Hey!" Kael shouted.
The guard turned. "Quiet, scum!"
Kael grabbed the fence post. His muscles bulged, veins standing out like cords. He flooded his body with Steel-rank Ether.
Impact.
He ripped the post out of the ground, nails and all.
With a roar, he charged the gate. He smashed the timber into the lock. The wood splintered.
"Gerry! Varn! Move!"
The three mercenaries burst out of the pen.
The camp was in disarray. Half the guards were running toward the medical tent. The other half were staring at the Bishop's tent, which was now deflating like a punctured lung.
"To the Bishop!" Kael ordered.
He drew his sword—which had been confiscated and tossed in a pile near the wagon, a rookie mistake by the soldiers. He grabbed it on the run.
They reached the Bishop's tent just as the roof caved in.
A figure burst through the silk.
It was Miriam. She was clutching a silver box. Her shoulder was smoking.
"Run!" she screamed.
Behind her, a pillar of golden fire blasted the remains of the tent into the sky.
Valerius rose from the ashes. He was untouched. He looked like an angry god.
"KILL THEM!" Valerius commanded. His voice was amplified by magic, booming across the entire camp. "KILL THE HERETICS!"
Paladins turned. Archers notched arrows.
They were surrounded.
"Plan B?" Kael asked, skidding to a halt beside Miriam.
"Plan B is running!" Miriam yelled.
"Too many arrows," Gerry grunted, raising a shield he had stolen.
Miriam looked at the box in her hands. She looked at the Bishop floating above them.
She looked at the ground.
This was a temple built on a swamp. The ground was wet.
"Varn!" Miriam shouted to the mage. "Can you freeze water?"
Varn looked at the puddles. "I'm a wind mage, not an ice mage!"
"Then blow!" Miriam ordered. "Create a mist! Now!"
Varn didn't argue. She slammed her staff into the mud.
Cyclone.
A vortex of wind spun around them, kicking up water and mud. It created a visual barrier.
Arrows whistled into the whirlwind, deflected by the sheer speed of the air.
"Into the temple!" Kael shouted. "We can't go back to the swamp, they'll hunt us down. The temple is a maze!"
It was a suicide run. The Sunken Temple was full of traps.
"Go!" Miriam agreed.
They sprinted toward the gaping maw of the temple entrance.
Valerius saw them.
"You will not escape!"
He raised both hands. A massive sphere of light formed above his head. It was a miniature sun.
"Judgment!"
He threw it.
The sphere arced through the air, trailing fire. It was aimed directly at the temple entrance.
"Faster!" Kael roared, shoving Miriam ahead of him.
They dove into the darkness of the temple corridor just as the sun-sphere hit the threshold.
BOOM.
The explosion was deafening. The entrance tunnel collapsed. Stones the size of carriages fell, sealing the way behind them.
Dust and darkness swallowed them whole.
Silence returned slowly.
Miriam coughed, waving the dust away. It was pitch black.
"Is everyone alive?" Kael's voice echoed in the gloom.
"Here," Varn wheezed.
"I'm good," Gerry said. "Hit my head, though."
"Miriam?"
"I am here," Miriam said. She was leaning against a cold, damp wall. Her shoulder was throbbing with a rhythmic, hot pain. The burn from the Bishop's laser was deep.
"Light," Kael ordered.
Varn muttered a cantrip. The tip of her staff began to glow with a soft, blue light.
The illumination revealed where they were.
They were in a long hallway made of black obsidian. The walls were carved with reliefs of strange, aquatic creatures. The air was cold and stale.
Behind them, a wall of rubble blocked the exit.
"Trapped," Gerry said, kicking a stone.
"Safe," Kael corrected. "For now. That collapse won't hold a Gold-rank mage for long. He'll melt through it in an hour."
He turned to Miriam.
"You got it?"
Miriam held up the silver box.
Kael grinned. It was a genuine smile of greed. "Open it."
Miriam hesitated. She could feel the energy radiating from the box. It wasn't just Holy energy. It was... dense. Like the gravity of a star trapped in a bottle.
She undid the latch.
The lid clicked open.
Inside, resting on black velvet, was not a heart.
It was a stone. A jagged, red crystal the size of a fist. It pulsed with a slow, rhythmic beat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
"The Heart of Saint Aelius," Varn whispered, her eyes wide. "Legend says he ripped it out of his own chest to purify a plague city."
Miriam looked at the stone.
She reached out to touch it.
"Don't!" Kael warned. "It burns unholy flesh."
Miriam paused. Her hand hovered over the crystal.
She didn't feel heat. She felt... resonance.
Her "Healer" core was vibrating in sympathy with the stone.
"It is not a weapon," Miriam whispered. "It is a battery. An infinite reservoir of Life Ether."
She looked up at Kael.
"The Bishop wanted to use this to burn the swamp? It is a waste. This stone... it could regrow a limb in seconds. It could cure cancer. It could make a man immortal."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Immortal men pay a lot of gold, Miriam."
"We are not selling this," Miriam said, snapping the box shut.
"Excuse me?" Kael stepped forward. The camaraderie of the escape evaporated instantly. "We have a contract. We sell the artifact, we split the coin. That was the deal."
"The deal was survival," Miriam said. She clutched the box tight. "If we go out there, Valerius kills us. We need to use this."
"Use it? How?"
"To fight him," Miriam said. "I can't beat a Gold-rank with tricks. I need raw power. This box is the power."
"If you absorb that, you'll explode," Varn said. "It's a Saint's core. Your body is Iron-rank trash. You'll pop like a balloon."
"Not if I filter it," Miriam said. Her mind was racing. "Not if I don't take it all at once."
She looked down the dark corridor.
"We have to go deeper. We need to find a place to defend. Valerius is coming."
Kael stared at her. He looked at the blocked entrance, then at the box.
"You're changing the plan again," he growled.
"I am adapting," Miriam said. She flinched as pain shot through her shoulder. "And I am wounded. I need to heal."
She didn't wait for his permission. She turned and walked deeper into the temple.
Kael watched her go. He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Boss?" Gerry asked quietly. "She's getting bossy."
"She's holding the nuke, Gerry," Kael muttered. "Until we get out of this hole, she's the captain. But once we're clear..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
They followed her into the dark.
Meanwhile, outside the temple.
Bishop Valerius stood before the pile of rubble. The smoke from his attack still drifted in the air.
His face was serene, but the ground beneath his feet was turning to glass from the sheer heat of his aura.
The Commander of the Sun-Eaters ran up to him, bowing low.
"Your Grace! The medical tent is... it is a disaster. The men... they are mad. They are attacking the nurses. We had to restrain them."
Valerius didn't look at him.
"She poisoned them," Valerius said softly. "She turned my own flock into a weapon."
He reached out and touched the rubble blocking the temple.
"She has the Heart. She thinks she has won."
He smiled. It was a smile devoid of mercy.
"But she does not know what the Heart actually is."
He turned to the Commander.
"Bring me the excavation mages. Melt this stone. I want them alive."
He looked back at the temple.
"The girl thinks she is a Healer? Let us see if she can heal what lives in the basement of this place."
Valerius chuckled.
"The Saint didn't die of old age, after all. He died because something in this temple ate him."
Deep inside the Temple.
The architecture was changing. The obsidian gave way to organic looking stone—walls that looked like calcified ribs.
Miriam walked in front. The silver box felt heavy in her hands.
She was tired. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the cold ache of the burn on her shoulder.
She found a small alcove, a dry spot near a statue of a fish-headed god.
"We rest here," she said, sliding down the wall.
Varn extinguished the light to save mana. They sat in the dark, listening to the drip of water.
Miriam opened the box again. The red glow of the Heart illuminated her face.
She needed to fix her shoulder.
She placed her hand near the crystal. She didn't touch it. She just inhaled the aura.
It was intoxicating.
Unlike the dirty, rot-filled Ether of the swamp, or the sterile, burning Ether of the Bishop, this was pure. It was thick, sweet, and vibrant.
She pulled a thread of red energy from the stone.
She guided it to her shoulder.
The effect was instantaneous.
The cauterized flesh bubbled. Pink skin knit together over the wound in seconds. No scar. No pain. Just... wholeness.
Miriam gasped. The efficiency was terrifying.
"It's too strong," she whispered to herself.
If she used this power on an enemy... she wouldn't just cause cancer. She could evolve them into a puddle of protoplasm.
She looked at her hand.
She had been a weak Healer. A failure.
Now, holding the heart of a dead Saint, she realized the truth of the world.
Power wasn't about breaking things.
Power was about deciding what shape things should take.
She closed the box.
"Kael," she said into the darkness.
"Yeah?"
"When Valerius breaks through... I want you to distract him."
"Distract a Gold-rank? With what? My sparkling personality?"
"No," Miriam said. "With the one thing a fanatic cannot resist."
She patted the box.
"We are going to offer him a trade."
"You're going to give it back?" Kael sounded incredulous.
"No," Miriam said. Her voice was cold. "I am going to give him the shell. But I am going to keep the meat."
She began to channel.
She wasn't healing anyone. She was healing the box. She was fusing the l
id shut on a molecular level.
And then, she began to drain the crystal inside.
Slowly. Carefully.
She was going to eat the Saint's Heart.
And when the Bishop came for his prize, he would find an empty battery and a Healer who had just ascended the food chain.
(End of Chapter 3)