"I need you to look at three patients no one else can fix."
Lucian didn't turn around when I entered. He stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back, watching the rain smear the glass of the Silver Peak administrative annex. The room smelled of stale coffee and ozone. My right hand went cold. It always did when the topic drifted toward decay.
"Diagnostic commission," he said. "Formal. Documented."
He finally turned. His face was unreadable, the kind of blank slate that took years to perfect. Or maybe he was just tired. The shadows under his eyes were deep, carved out by too many late nights and not enough answers. He walked to the desk and tapped a file. Thick. Heavy with paper.
"Three Iron Edge field healers on temp contracts. All D-rank. Developed unexplained imprint degradation in the last six weeks. The senior medics flagged it as exhaustion and sent them home — they came back worse. I'm routing it laterally past standard channels."
I stopped moving. My feet felt rooted to the floor, but I kept my breathing even. Shallow. Controlled.
"The pattern doesn't match overuse," Lucian continued. "Doesn't match age. Doesn't match injury. Iron Edge's medical team ran full panels. Blood, marrow, imprint resonance. Everything came back normal except for the decay rate. Their official diagnosis: accelerated natural degradation. Cause unknown."
He paused. Let the words hang. They weren't just words. They were a test.
"Their treatment suggestion was rest," he said, a flicker of something dry crossing his mouth. "The decay continued. Faster."
He pushed the file across the desk. It slid over the polished wood, stopping inches from my fingers. I didn't touch it yet. I looked at him instead.
"I chose you specifically, Vera. An outsider. You have no political ties inside Iron Edge. No reason to cover for anyone. No loyalty to the old guard that might want this swept under the rug."
His eyes locked on mine. Blue. Sharp. Waiting.
"Your recent work on temp contracts showed precision. You notice things others miss. I need that precision now. Full access to the patients. Full access to their records. You find the cause. You stop it."
The irony hit me like a physical blow, a blade pressed flat against my ribs, dull side first. I was the world's foremost expert on imprint degradation. I didn't just notice it. I made it. I controlled it. I could tell him exactly why their imprint signatures were crumbling, down to the hour I had touched them, the angle of my hand, the specific frequency of decay I had injected.
I couldn't say any of that.
My throat tightened, but I forced a smile. Small. Practiced. The mask of the eager, slightly nervous E-rank healer who just wanted to help.
"That's a significant commission," I said. My voice sounded steady. Too steady? I adjusted the tone, added a hint of breathless gratitude. "I... I'm honored you'd consider me for something this sensitive."
I reached out and took the file. The paper was cool. My right hand, the one that held the edge, felt like it was holding a block of ice. The cold spread up my wrist, a familiar warning. *Don't use it. Don't slip.*
"Who are they?" I asked.
Lucian recited the names. Two I recognized. One I didn't. The one I didn't know was a logistics coordinator. The other two were field medics. All three had been in the same vicinity during the Ash Valley incident. The same vicinity where I had been working. The same vicinity where I had been hunting.
Sol Mercer wasn't on the list. Not yet. Maybe Lucian didn't know about Sol's arm. Or maybe he was saving that for a separate conversation. The thought made my stomach turn over.
"The timeline matches the Ash Valley deployment," Lucian said, echoing my thought. "But the decay started weeks after we returned. Delayed onset. That's what has the medical team confused. Usually, imprint stress shows up immediately. This is... latent."
Latent. He used the word carefully. Like he was testing how it sounded in the air.
"I can start today," I said. "Do I have clearance to enter the medical wing?"
"I've already processed the request." He handed me a keycard. Silver. Higher clearance than I usually carried. "Go to Ward 4. Ask for Nurse Halloway. She has the charts. The patients are in rooms 402, 404, and 409."
I took the card. It felt heavy in my palm. Heavier than plastic should be.
"Thank you, Lucian." I used his name. He liked that. It made things feel personal, even when they weren't. "I won't let you down."
"I know," he said. "That's why I asked."
I turned to leave. My legs wanted to run, but I walked. Slow. Deliberate. One foot in front of the other. Don't look back. Don't let him see the sweat gathering on my upper lip. Don't let him see the way my right hand was shaking, just slightly, against my thigh.
The door clicked shut behind me. The hallway was quiet. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, a low, electric buzz that grated on my nerves. I leaned against the wall for a second, just a second, and closed my eyes.
*Three patients.*
*Three more names on a list I didn't write.*
*Three more chances for someone to look too closely.*
I pushed off the wall and started walking toward the elevators. Ward 4 was on the fourth floor. Iron Edge's main medical facility was attached to the guild hall, a sprawling complex of white walls and sterilized air. I had been there before, mostly to drop off paperwork or pick up supplies. Never as a lead diagnostician. Never with this kind of access.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors slid shut, cutting off the view of the hallway. I was alone.
I pulled the file open.
Photos. Medical histories. Imprint scans. The decay curves were stark, black lines diving downward on the graphs. Steep. Unnatural. Anyone with half a brain could see this wasn't natural. It was too fast. Too targeted.
But they didn't have half a brain. They had protocols. They had assumptions. They thought healers broke from overuse. They thought imprint fatigue was a resource issue. They didn't think about sabotage. They didn't think about a weapon hidden inside a healing touch.
I traced the line on the graph for Patient 402. Dean Holt's old squad mate. A medic named Elias Thorne. The decay started twelve days after the Ash Valley mission. Twelve days. That was within my window. I had touched him during the extraction. Just a brush of hands as I passed him a stim-pack. Enough. Always enough.
Patient 404. Mara Kress. Logistics. I remembered her. She had handed me my assignment papers that morning. I had shaken her hand. A formal greeting. Polite. Efficient. The decay started eighteen days later.
Patient 409. The one I didn't know. Julian Vane. A scout. I scanned his file. He hadn't been in Ash Valley. He had been on perimeter duty in Sector 7. Sector 7. I frowned. I hadn't been in Sector 7. Not that I remembered.
I flipped the page. Attached duty roster. There it was. A joint operation. Iron Edge and Silver Peak. Two weeks before Ash Valley. I had been there. A small healing detail for a skirmish on the border. I had treated a minor burn. Just a graze. I had focused on the burn, not the person.
I had touched him.
My breath hitched. I hadn't targeted him. He wasn't on the list. He was collateral. An accident.
The elevator dinged. Fourth floor.
The doors opened to the smell of antiseptic and boiled vegetables. The nurse's station was busy, a chaotic hub of clerks and healers rushing back and forth. I approached the desk, holding up the keycard.
"Nurse Halloway?" I asked.
A woman looked up. Middle-aged. Tired eyes. She glanced at the card, then at me. "You're the consultant?"
"Yes. Vera Blackwell. Lucian Voss sent me."
She nodded, not looking impressed. "Room 402 first. Thorne is awake. He's... agitated. The pain meds aren't helping much."
"I'll do what I can," I said.
I walked down the corridor. Room 402. The door was ajar. I pushed it open.
Elias Thorne lay in the bed, pale and gaunt. His arm was exposed, the skin mottled with dark, necrotic patches that shouldn't be there on a healer. His imprint signature, usually a warm glow, was flickering like a dying candle.
He looked up as I entered. His eyes were sunken, desperate.
"Another one?" he rasped. "Come to tell me to rest? To drink more water?"
"No," I said softly. I moved to the bedside. "I'm here to find out why."
I reached out to take his wrist. To check his pulse. To feel the decay I had put there.
My right hand hovered over his skin. The cold radiated from my palm, intense now. A warning. *If you touch him, you'll see it. You'll feel the rot you made.*
I hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second.
Then I placed my fingers on his wrist.
The sensation hit me like a shock. Not pain. Recognition. It was my work. My signature. Twisted and accelerating, but unmistakably mine. I could feel the threads of decay unraveling his imprint, eating it from the inside out.
It was beautiful. In a horrifying kind of way.
And it was still active. Still eating.
"How does it feel?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
"Like burning ice," he whispered. "It never stops."
"I know," I said.
I closed my eyes for a moment, focusing. I could reverse it. I had the power to heal what I broke. But if I did, the pattern would change. The decay would stop abruptly. The medical team would notice. They would ask questions. *Why did the unknown consultant fix what the best healers in the guild couldn't?*
I couldn't fix him. Not yet. Not until I knew how much Lucian suspected. Not until I knew if this was a trap.
"I need to run some tests," I said, pulling my hand away. The loss of contact left my palm tingling. "I'll be back."
I left the room before he could answer. Before I could see the hope in his eyes. Hope was dangerous. It made people ask for miracles. I couldn't give miracles. I could only give time.
I moved to Room 404. Mara Kress. She was asleep. Her decay was slower, more subtle. But it was there. Eating away at her core.
Room 409. Julian Vane. He was awake, reading a book. He looked up when I entered. His arm was bandaged, but I could sense the decay underneath. Faint. But present.
Three patients. Three victims. All collateral damage in a war I was fighting alone.
I stood in the middle of Julian's room, looking at the chart in my hand. The numbers swam before my eyes.
*Pool: 91.6%.*
The number sat in my head, a constant reminder. Every time I used my power, the ceiling dropped. Every time I let the decay run, I lost a little more of myself. I was trading my future for their present.
But was it just decay?
I looked at Julian's file again. Sector 7. Two weeks before Ash Valley.
Why was he on the list of affected patients if he wasn't a primary target? Was it just bad luck? Or was there something else?
I flipped to the back of the file. Attached lab results. A note from the head of medical.
*Anomaly detected in imprint residue. Frequency mismatch. Source unknown.*
Frequency mismatch.
My blood ran cold. Colder than my hand.
The decay I created had a specific frequency. A signature. If they had detected a mismatch, that meant there was something else in there. Something I didn't put there.
Someone else was using decay.
Or someone else was trying to frame me.
I closed the file. My hands were shaking now. Not from cold. From fear. Real, primal fear.
If there was another player, someone who could mimic my power or twist it, then I wasn't just hunting a list. I was walking into a minefield.
And Lucian knew.
He had to know. Why else would he bring me in? Why else would he give me access to the one thing that could expose me?
I walked back to the nurse's station. Nurse Halloway was typing on a terminal.
"I need to see the raw scan data for Patient 409," I said. "The original imprint resonance logs. Not the summary."
She looked up, frowning. "That's restricted. Only senior medics and guild masters can access raw logs."
"Lucian Voss gave me full access," I said, holding up the keycard. "Check the authorization code."
She typed it in. Her eyebrows went up. "Alright. Give me a minute."
She pulled up the data on a secondary screen. Waves of color danced across the display. Blue for healthy. Red for decay. And there, buried in the noise, a spike of purple.
Purple.
I had never seen purple decay before. My decay was red. Black. Dead.
Purple was... new.
"Can you isolate that frequency?" I asked.
She clicked a few buttons. The spike grew larger. It pulsed, rhythmic and wrong.
"It's not natural," she muttered. "It looks artificial. Like a marker."
"A marker?" I echoed.
"Like someone tagged him," she said. "But why?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
Because I knew why.
It wasn't a marker for tracking. It was a beacon.
And it was leading straight to me.
The crowd of nurses at the station suddenly went quiet. One of them dropped a tray of instruments. The clatter echoed loudly in the sterile silence. They were staring at the screen. At the purple spike.
"What is that?" one whispered.
"I've never seen an imprint signature like that," another said, voice trembling. "It's... it's eating the healing energy. Reversing it."
"Is that possible?" a third asked. "Can you reverse healing?"
I didn't wait for them to finish. I grabbed the file and turned on my heel.
"I need to speak to Lucian," I said. "Now."
I walked out of the ward, my heart hammering against my ribs. Not from exertion. From the realization that the game had changed.
I wasn't the only hunter anymore.
Someone else was in the woods. And they were leaving breadcrumbs.
I reached the elevator and pressed the button. The doors opened immediately. I stepped inside and hit the button for the ground floor.
As the doors closed, I caught my reflection in the polished metal. Pale. Eyes wide. Terrified.
The elevator descended.
When the doors opened on the ground floor, Lucian was waiting.
He wasn't standing by the window this time. He was standing right in front of the elevator, arms crossed. He looked at me, and his expression wasn't curious.
It was satisfied.
"You found it," he said. Not a question.
I stepped out of the elevator. My legs felt weak, but I forced myself to stand tall.
"Found what?" I asked.
He took a step closer. The air between us crackled.
"The purple frequency," he said. "The marker. The thing that proves you aren't the only one playing with fire."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small drive. He held it out to me.
"There's more," he said. "Much more. And it's all on here."
I looked at the drive. Then at him.
"Why?" I asked. "Why show me this?"
"Because," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "The person who left that marker? They didn't just tag Julian Vane."
He paused. Let the silence stretch, thick and suffocating.
"They tagged you too, Vera. And they're coming to collect."
*Power Stone if Vera's still ruining lives the way you want her to.*