The scent of parched earth and unwashed bodies clung to the airless chamber, thick as the dust motes dancing in the single shaft of sunlight from a high vent. The young physician, trapped inside the body of Dr. Mina Park's successor, knelt beside a straw mat where a girl, no older than seven, thrashed weakly. The child’s eyes, once bright as river stones, were now sunken pools in a face taut with suffering. Her skin, once the warm hue of sun-kissed wheat, was beginning to stiffen, a faint, orange-brown crust spreading from her small hands, up her forearms, and across her cheeks like nascent terracotta. “The hardened rot,” chanted a priest, his voice a low, mournful drone from the shadowed corner. “The sleeping deity demands his due. She has sinned.” Ishtarû ignored him. The subterranean murmurs, usually a faint hum at the edge of her consciousness, were urgent now, a chorus of wordless warnings that made the bones in her skull ache. She pressed a hand to the child’s forehead. Fever. A deep, gnawing heat that radiated from within. The girl whimpered, a dry, raspy sound, and tried to curl into herself. Her lips were cracked, her tongue a leathery strip. The hardening of the skin was deemed sacred punishment for some unknown transgression. But Mina – Ishtarû – saw something else. Her mind, a relic from a future that had never truly existed for her, scrolled through images: impoverished villages, contaminated wells, the rapid, merciless spread of disease. Dehydration. Cholera. Not a curse. A bacterium. Cholera: the ancient scourge, swift killer of the unwary, cloaked here in the language of temple wrath. “She needs water,” the surgeon said, her voice thin, rusty from disuse. The language of Teneb-Ur, a harsh, guttural tongue, felt alien on her tongue. Anu-Mer, the High Priest, a towering figure draped in robes of undyed wool, stepped forward. His face, etched with lines of devotion, was serene, but his eyes, dark as obsidian, held an unsettling intensity. “Our dormant lord will provide, if it is His will. Do not interfere with sacred judgment, peasant girl.” She flinched, the familiar sting of imposter syndrome, Mina’s old shadow, rising. *Peasant girl.* That’s what she was. A slave, traded for a sack of grain, brought to this labyrinthine city of baked clay. Who was she, a disgraced surgeon, to challenge a god? But the child’s shallow breathing, the desperate flicker in her eyes, silenced the doubt. This was not a god’s will. This was unsanitary conditions and basic microbiology. “His will,” she murmured, more to herself than to Anu-Mer. “His will is for her to live. She needs rehydration.” She looked around the room, her gaze sweeping over the various vessels. A clay jug, half-filled with murky water. A small, unglazed bowl. “Bring me salt. And something sweet.” The priests exchanged bewildered glances. One of them, a gaunt man named Irkalla, snorted. “Salt? For a sacred affliction? You mock the sleeping one, girl.” “The stone whispers to me,” she said, a sudden, unfamiliar boldness in her voice. The lie tasted bitter, but necessary. “He shows me what to do.” The psychic pulses intensified, a dizzying swirl of images and sensations. They weren’t words, not really, but feelings, impressions. And now, clear as day, a vision: a stream, clean and flowing, cutting through a parched landscape. Anu-Mer’s gaze sharpened, a flicker of something unreadable in his deep eyes. “The unseen voices speak to her,” he stated, his voice now a sonorous pronouncement. “Bring her what she asks.” Irkalla hesitated, then grudgingly fetched a small pouch of coarse salt and a handful of dried fruit. She crushed the fruit, dissolving it with salt in the murky water. The solution was crude, imperfect, but it was all she had. She knelt, cradling the child’s head, and gently dribbled the mixture into her mouth. Slow. Steady. A single drop at a time. Minutes stretched into an eternity. The faint chorus remained a constant buzz, pushing her, guiding her. *More. Steadily. Don’t stop.* Her fingers ached from holding the child’s chin, from keeping her airway clear. The priests watched, a mixture of awe and resentment on their faces. Anu-Mer observed her with an unnerving stillness, his eyes never leaving her. Gradually, the child’s gulping became less desperate, her breathing eased, a faint, moist sound instead of the dry rasp. The orange crust on her skin seemed to soften, to recede, if only by a fraction. A cautious relief took root in her chest. It worked. Basic rehydration, a fundamental axiom of medicine, had worked. Anu-Mer strode forward, his voice booming through the small chamber. “Praise be to the Sleeper beneath the stone! He has seen fit to bestow his mercy through our new vessel! The crust recedes!” He lifted his hands to the heavens, his face aglow with an almost fanatical fervor. “A miracle! A true miracle!” But not everyone shared his zeal. From the doorway, a shadow detached itself from the gloom. Captain Zababa, his face ridged with old weapon scars, stalked into the room. His hand rested on the hilt of his short sword, his flint-colored eyes fixed upon her. He watched her for a long moment, his gaze dissecting, evaluating. He paused beside the threshold, observing the straw mat. His gaze shifted from the recovering child to her, then to the triumphant Anu-Mer. He leaned in close, his breath smelling of parched grain and ox tallow. His voice was a low growl, meant only for her. “A demon’s trick or a god’s will… either way, girl, you carry a ruin of your own.”

The First Axiom