Sei woke with the strange certainty that something had shifted.

  Not pain. Not exhaustion. Just awareness—like noticing your own heartbeat after running, even once you’ve stopped.

  His hands rested on his chest, fingers flexing slowly. They felt the same. No lingering warmth. No glow. No wrongness like the scalpel left behind.

  “Fantastic,” he muttered. “Emotional aftertaste.”

  He sat up, rubbing his face. The room was dim, early morning light threading through the shutters. Outside, Toradol stirred—the low murmur of voices, the scrape of stone being moved back into place.

  Normal.

  Which somehow made it worse.

  Eva found him in the corridor before he reached the stairs.

  “You’re walking too fast,” she said.

  Sei blinked. “Good morning to you too.”

  “You didn’t sleep.”

  “I slept,” he replied. “Just… aggressively aware.”

  She studied him for a moment, then nodded once. “You don’t look unwell.”

  “That’s reassuring. I’d hate to be haunted by my own success.”

  She didn’t smile.

  They walked in silence for a while, boots echoing softly. Eventually, Eva spoke.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What you did,” she said carefully, “was healing magic.”

  Sei exhaled through his nose. “I was hoping you’d say it was indigestion.”

  “It was controlled. Intentional. And witnessed.”

  That last word landed heavier than the rest.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “Not bad,” Eva said. “Yet.”

  She stopped near an open archway overlooking the city. Workers moved below like ants, rebuilding what the siege had torn apart. Life resuming its stubborn insistence.

  “Healers like that are rare,” she continued. “And they don’t stay unnoticed.”

  Sei leaned on the stone railing. “I didn’t announce it.”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  The infirmary felt different.

  No one crowded him. No one bowed. But conversations slowed when he entered. A medic stepped aside without thinking. A patient’s eyes followed him with something too sharp to be gratitude.

  Expectation.

  A young soldier approached, arm in a sling. “Sir—”

  Sei raised a hand gently. “I’m not—”

  “I know,” the soldier said quickly. “I just wanted to say thank you. For… staying.”

  Sei swallowed. “You’re welcome.”

  The man left, satisfied.

  Sei wasn’t.

  He turned to Eva. “This is how it starts, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll want more.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “They’ll understand,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Some of them.”

  That wasn’t comforting.

  Later, a request came—polite, measured. A merchant’s wife with chronic pain. Nothing urgent. Nothing dangerous.

  Sei read the note twice.

  Then he folded it and handed it back.

  “I can’t,” he said calmly. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  The messenger hesitated. “But you helped the soldier—”

  “He was dying,” Sei replied. “And I didn’t know what would happen. That hasn’t changed.”

  The man nodded, disappointment flickering before he masked it. “Of course.”

  As he left, Sei felt the boundary settle into place—thin, fragile, already under strain.

  From the far end of the hall, Elder Maerwyn watched.

  They noted the refusal. The control. The absence of hunger.

  “Interesting,” they murmured. “No invocation. No demand.”

  They turned away before being noticed.

  As evening fell, Sei returned to the same overlook where he’d stood days before. The city below glowed with lantern light, whole again in small, defiant ways.

  He rested his hands on the stone, feeling its chill.

  The scalpel had frightened him because it felt wrong.

  This… frightened him because it felt right.

  Power hadn’t made him dangerous.

  It had made him needed.

  And that was a weight he wasn’t sure he could ever set down again.