The mud was cold.
I lay on my back, staring at the flat grey sky. The satchel at my hip radiated a dead chill through the leather, through my shirt, into my side. The crystal. Even separated from the vein, it pulled. A slow, patient drain on whatever was left in my core.
Eventually I sat up. My arms shook. The cracked ribs on my right side ground against each other. A white flash across my vision. I sat very still, breathing through my nose, until it faded.
The mine entrance was behind me — a jagged wound in the hillside, half-collapsed. Frost covered the rubble at its mouth. Below, the valley stretched under the grey sky. Bare trees. Frozen grass. A thin line of smoke from the village, miles south.
Silas's cave was north. Through the tree line, over the ridge, down the ravine. Maybe two hours on a good day.
I stood up. My right knee gave almost immediately. I caught myself on a broken stump, breathing hard.
Today wasn't a good day.
I started walking.
* * *
The forest was quiet. Frozen ground crunched under my boots — a flat, brittle sound that carried further than I'd have liked.
I kept to the tree line. Moving in the open was faster, but I had no mana for a Ken, and my right arm couldn't swing the hammer without sending a spike through my ribcage. If a patrol found me — Greyve's people, Guild scouts, anyone — I was dead.
The satchel bounced against my hip. The cold spread. Within the first mile, the entire left side of my torso was numb. I shifted the strap to my opposite shoulder. The numbness followed.
My thoughts drifted. The fireplace. The armchair. Ilisika's fingers. Zi-Lio's sharp eyes, warm with wine and firelight.
The purple-haired man's voice cut through. Fascinatingly stupid.
I kept walking.
* * *
The ridge took me an hour. The ravine took another. By the time I reached the rocky outcropping that marked Silas's territory, the grey sky was darkening toward evening. My legs were moving on their own.
The path — barely a path. A deer track through dense undergrowth, three small scratches on a birch trunk. Silas's mark.
The cave mouth appeared between two moss-covered boulders.
The tunnel narrowed. Twenty paces in, it opened into the main chamber — high-ceilinged, lit by three clusters of white crystals embedded in the walls.
I dropped the satchel on the heavy wooden table. A solid thud.
Silas looked up from his mortar and pestle. He looked at the satchel.
I reached in, unwrapped the cloth, and pulled out the smooth, black crystal.
The air instantly grew colder. The ambient hum of Silas's wards thinned. Mana dragged toward the black stone.
Silas's eyes widened. He wiped his hands on a rag, stepped forward, hovered his fingers an inch above the crystal.
"Oh," he whispered. "Oh, that's lovely."
He grabbed iron tongs. Clamped them around the crystal and carried it to his lead-lined strongbox.
"Careful, careful, careful..." He set the stone inside with the delicacy of a man placing a baby into a crib. "There we go. Good girl. Eat later." He slammed the lid. Dusted off his hands. Turned to me with a grin.
"You know what you just brought me, yes?"
"A rock that tried to kill me."
"A rock that tried to kill you! Oh! Which means" — he raised a finger — "we can fill it." He clapped his hands together. "Magnificent."
I leaned against the wall and slid down to the stone floor. Every muscle in my legs trembled. My ribs shifted with every breath.
Silas was already pacing. He circled the table, running his fingers along the edge, muttering to himself. Then he stopped. Spun toward me.
"How deep?"
"Bottom level. Black vein in the wall. There's more."
"Obviously there's more. There's always more. That's just a finger. The hand is probably the size of this entire—" He waved vaguely at the cavern. "Never mind. The walkers?"
"Plenty."
"Killed them?"
"Some."
He tilted his head. His eyes moved down my body — the blood on my temple, the way I cradled my right side, the torn jacket.
"You look atrocious," he said cheerfully.
"Thanks."
"No, genuinely. You look like someone threw you down a hill." He turned away, apparently satisfied. He walked to the center of the cavern, where three wide stone slabs served as his tables.
Two were occupied.
On the first lay the remains of a sheep. The hide peeled back, muscle groups separated and pinned to the stone with iron hooks. Neat paper tags in Silas's spidery handwriting were attached to individual tendons.
On the second slab lay a wild boar.
Its ribcage was propped open with iron spreaders. Dead, grey tissue woven through with decaying dark lines.
Silas picked up a scalpel. Made a long, precise incision down the boar's hind leg.
"Watch this," he said. "This is the interesting part."
He pinned a muscle flap back. Held it open with a small clamp. With a pair of tweezers, he pulled out a thin, almost invisible thread of residual mana — dark purple, barely glowing.
"See that? That's what keeps the leg on." He dangled the thread in the crystal light. "If I tie this to the bone — walks. If the thread snaps under load — leg rips off."
He dropped the thread into a glass vial.
"Eleven sheep," he said. "Eleven. Before I got the shoulder joint to hold. And the farmer charged me full price for each. Full price! For animals I was doing him a favor by taking off his hands, in my opinion."
He probed the exposed tissue with the scalpel.
"The Academy idiots never tried to understand the art" — he made a flopping gesture with his free hand — "Very undignified."
I watched him. Steady hands. He was genuinely enjoying himself.
I unbuckled my jacket. Pulling my left arm out of the sleeve took a solid minute of teeth-grinding effort. I stripped my shirt off.
My right ribcage was a canvas of deep purple and sickly yellow.
Silas glanced over his shoulder. Set the scalpel down, wiped his hands, walked over. He crouched in front of me and pressed two fingers against the discoloured skin. I flinched.
"Two fractures," he said. "Maybe three. You've been walking on these for how long?"
"Three hours."
"Impressive." He stood. "Can you heal?"
"No."
"No as in you don't want to, or no as in you don't know how?"
"I don't know how."
Silas tilted his head. He stared at me for a long moment. Then a slow grin crept across his face.
"Oh, that's perfect," he said. "That's actually perfect. A mage who can crack stone, throw fire, and electrocute, but can't close a scratch. They really did a number on you, didn't they?"
He walked to his bookshelf — a crooked arrangement of rough planks bolted to the cave wall. He pulled out a thin, leather-bound notebook and tossed it into my lap.
"Page twelve," he said. "Basic tissue restoration. The simplest healing cast in existence."
I opened the notebook. The pages were handwritten. Diagrams of mana flow patterns — arrows curving inward instead of outward, looping back on themselves. The opposite of everything I knew. Fire, Earth, Lightning — all pushed out. This pulled in.
"The trick," Silas said, settling onto a stool across from me, "is that you're not fixing anything. You're asking the body to remember what it looked like before it broke. You only provide the mana. Like watering a plant."
I studied the diagram. The mana pathway started at the core, rose through the chest, then split into dozens of thin branches before reaching the palm. The exact opposite of a combat cast, where you compressed everything into one dense bolt.
I raised my left hand. Focused on my chest. Tried to do what the diagram showed — open wide, spread thin, let the mana flow softly toward my fingertips.
A pale, golden glow gathered in my fingers. Weak. Flickering.
I pressed my palm against the broken ribs.
The reaction was immediate.
My body rejected the magic. The golden light flared, turning jagged. Hot needles pushed under my skin. The scarred channels in my core clamped down on the restorative mana.
I set my teeth. Tried to soften the flow. But the harder I tried to relax the channels, the tighter they gripped. It was like trying to unclench a fist that was wired shut.
The flesh over my ribs crawled. A maddening itch erupted deep in the marrow. Every nerve screamed wrong, get it out.
I ripped my hand away, gasping. The light shattered.
Silas watched from his stool, arms crossed.
"Ah," he said. "That."
"What?"
"Your channels." He leaned forward. "Healing mana needs to spread. Yours can't. Your channels crush it before it reaches the bone."
He tapped his chin.
"Try again. Slower. Half the mana."
I tried again. Half the mana. The golden glow was barely visible. I pressed my palm to my ribs.
Same result. The channels seized. The itch came back, deeper. I held on for five seconds before pulling away.
"Again," Silas said. "Quarter mana."
I tried. Three seconds. My body fought it like a foreign substance.
Silas stood up. He looked almost pleased.
"Well, that answers that," he said. "Your channels are scarred. The Seal, the dust, whatever you did to yourself before you lost your memory — it all compressed your pathways into siege weaponry. You're physically incapable of a gentle cast. The mana comes out hard or not at all."
He walked to a heavy cupboard against the far wall. Opened it. Inside — rows of clay jars, bundles of dried plants, glass vials with handwritten labels. He pulled out two things: a fistful of dried brown leaves, and a small jar containing three wrinkled, blackish mushrooms.
He held up the leaves.
"These are boring," he said. "Herbs. They help your body slowly. But no magic required. Takes weeks for bones. And nothing rejects them. Maybe."
He set them down. Held up the jar.
"These are considerably less boring."
He tilted the jar so I could see. The mushrooms were dark, wrinkled, faintly oily.
"Canal stimulants. They force the channels open from the inside. Temporarily. While they're working, the healing mana can slip through before your body knows what happened." He paused. "Downside: feels like your blood is boiling. Six hours. Also addictive. Take too many and your channels turn to ash."
"How many is too many?"
"Normal person? Four. You? Maybe eight." He squinted at me. "I'd rather you not test the limit."
"Where do I get more?"
He tossed me a small, brass-bound key. It clinked against the stone floor beside my leg.
"Grate at the end of the sewer tunnel. Opens into the lower aqueduct. Twenty minutes to the undercity market." He folded his arms. "Find a herbalist. Buy the boring ones in bulk. The mushrooms — stalls near the eastern gate. Ask for 'deep caps'. Quietly."
He jabbed a finger at me.
"And don't go to an alchemist. Questions lead to names. Names lead to very unpleasant conversations with very humourless people."
"Clear."
"Wonderful." He turned back to his boar. "Tomorrow. Tonight, you sleep. And you practice the cast."
He picked up his scalpel again.
"Think of it as training."
I leaned my head back against the stone wall. Closed my eyes. The notebook sat open on my lap, the diagram of branching golden lines staring up at me.
I raised my hand. No target. Just the air. I tried to form the gentlest cast I could manage — a thin, spreading golden light with no destination.
It flickered. Collapsed. I tried again.
Flickered. Three seconds. Collapsed.
Again. Four seconds. The light held, trembling.
Silas's scalpel scraped against bone somewhere behind me.
I kept practicing.
I fell asleep with my hand still raised, golden sparks dying on my fingertips.