The stillness that followed the burning of the Rime-leaf patches was more oppressive than any accusation. It was the silence of a door slamming shut, of a historical cure being erased not just from memory, but from the very soil. Amelia felt the loss like a physical amputation. The brief flicker of hope she had kindled was now just another ghost in Oakhaven’s haunted streets.It was in this vacuum of despair that the government chose to speak. Not with medicine, not with aid, but with a spectacle.The announcement blared from every functioning public screen and crackled over emergency radio bands. Chancellor Lysandra, her voice digitally smoothed to a mask of unwavering authority, declared a “National Day of Resilience.” In Oakhaven, this would be marked by a “Parade of Strength,” a column of the army’s finest marching through the city’s central boulevard to demonstrate that the state, not some rogue healer with a cursed stone, was the true bastion against the plague.“It’s insanity,”

The shattering of the cages had been a declaration of war, and the state’s retaliation was swift and surgical. They could not cage the sick without a backlash, so they moved to cage the cure. The government, in its frantic bid to maintain a monopoly on the narrative of survival, issued Directive 8: The Nationalization of Medical Personnel.Amelia first felt the shift when the usual, harried flow of information from the remaining city hospitals slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely. Overnight, the military cordon around the medical district tightened, not to keep the sick out, but to keep the doctors in.Ethan, his face pale beneath a layer of grime, brought the news. “They’ve locked them down. All of them. Every doctor, nurse, and medic with any significant training. They’re calling it ‘The White Coat Draft.’ They’re being conscripted into the National Health Guard.”“Conscripted to do what?” Sophia asked, her voice trembling. “We’re already working to the bone.”“Not to heal,” E

The Obelisk’s rage had cooled to a dull, constant throb in Amelia’s soul, a background radiation of cosmic disappointment. But the practical, human world had no time for the existential crises of sentient monoliths. The plagues were still spreading. The brief, fiery hope of the riots had gutted out, leaving behind the cold reality that breaking a system was not the same as building a new one.The Rime-leaf extract, the forgotten cure, was their only tangible victory. In Oakhaven, its distribution—now managed by a fragile alliance of freed doctors, volunteers, and what was left of Kincaid’s loyalists—was slowing the Grey Breath’s suffocating advance. It was a dam, not a river, but it was holding.“It’s not enough,” Amelia stated, her voice flat. She stood with Ethan, Sophia, and a grim-faced Colonel Kincaid over a map of the nation. The northern provinces were a blot of crimson, marked ‘Lost.’ Tendrils of outbreak snaked through the central heartlands. “We’re saving one city while the

The betrayal, when it came, was a masterstroke. It wasn’t delivered in a dark alley or a clandestine meeting, but on the newly re-established state-controlled news channel, broadcast across every functioning screen in Oakhaven. The signal was weak, the image grainy, but the message was crystal clear.Dr. Marcus Aris, his face freshly scrubbed and his white coat improbably pristine, sat beside a government spokesman. He was no longer the haggard, tormented physician from Ethan’s footage. He was calm, assured, a pillar of restored order. And he was dismantling Amelia’s reputation with the precision of a surgeon.“Let me be perfectly clear,” Aris said, his voice firm, his gaze steady on the camera. “What Amelia Reed practices is not medicine. It is a dangerous, unregulated, and ultimately fraudulent form of mysticism. There is no ‘Obelisk.’ There are no ‘forgotten truths.’ There is only a traumatized woman with a savior complex, exploiting the desperation of the sick with parlor tricks a

The camp was a canvas of suffering, painted in shades of grey and blue. The Grey Breath moved through the tents like an invisible tide, leaving behind the wreckage of labored breathing and heliotrope skin. Amelia and Sophia moved with it, their work a grim, repetitive liturgy of easing passage. They could not cure, not here, not with their resources stretched to nothing. They could only offer small mercies: a sip of clean water, a cool cloth, a hand to hold in the dark.It was in this landscape of resigned grief that Amelia first saw the boy.He was maybe seven years old, small for his age, with a thatch of unruly black hair and eyes that were too old for his face. He wasn't a patient. He was a fixture, a small, quiet ghost flitting between the cots. He would hold a cup of water to the lips of a man twice his size, or carefully adjust a blanket over a shivering woman. The sick didn't fear him; they watched him with a kind of weary, baffled gratitude.Amelia’s Obelisk-enhanced senses,