The ride to market town Briar's End was a ribbon of dust and hope, heavy with rumors in the wind. No longer merely whispers about the "miracle doctor" of Oakhaven, they had turned bitter into something specific, something menacing. They spoke of a man who could unburn fire, who purified poison from water by sand and sunlight, who restored life to dead things by a glow of hands. Alexander Carter was no longer a man, but a legend, and legends attract devotion and disbelief.Briar's End was light-years from the isolation of Oakhaven. A bustling city where the desperation of the nation blended with the indifference of petty bureaucracy, the atmosphere was thick and heavy with smells of animals, freshly baked bread, and festering trash. In Briar's End, people were so densely packed that illness was a quiet, chronic visitor, and hope was a commodity that was spent sparingly.Alexander's goal was simple: supplies. Salt, needles, hardy cloth, and, if possible, a few books. Basic materials a t

The room above The Guttering Candle was an egg of distant pain. The turmoil of the sick city was a low, insistent hum below the boards, a clashing chorus of coughs and screams and the rare ringing bell of an epidemic cart. Alexander lay on his bony pallet, but sleep was a distant country. The Bio-Scry map of the city burned its way onto the back of his eyelids—a universe of hurt with a throbbing black star in the center.Every red light was a charge. Every flash of gold, a chain of blame. The weight of the Second Carving, the Law of Consequences, was a weight of lead on his heart. He was to shatter a system. How does a man topple an empire built on illness? With herbs? With sand? The tools of Oakhaven were woefully insufficient against Aethelred's monolithic greed.A familiar tension began to build at the center of his forehead, a psychic thunderhead. The city sounds receded, not into silence, but into a deep, thrumming quietness. The air within the tiny room became heavy, charged wit

The tenement room silence following Ronan's speaking of his wife's name was a bubble of impossible reality, fragile and poised to burst. When it burst, the sound that erupted was not applause, but a discordant wave of gasps and sobs and frantic questions. The two physicians from City General stood frozen, their professional haughtiness shattered and replaced with primal, superstitious fear. The younger one fled without a word, elbowing through the crowd outside. The older, Dr. Evans, remained, his face pale, his hand trembling as he reached not for a medical instrument, but to scratch a sign of protection against evil.Alexander paid them little heed. He was empty, a vessel drained of all but a faint spark of awareness. The cost of the Hands of Purifying Fire was not paid in System Points alone; it was a hemorrhage of spirit. He was drained, his nerves scraped raw by the passage of unthinkable power. Sophia was at his side in an instant, her arm around him, holding him up. Her touch w

The lull in the Council chamber after Alexander's rebellion was thicker than the dust on the law books lining the walls. Chancellor Hale's cold smile was a promise of bureaucratic violence, more fearsome than any shouted threat. The two guards at the door moved forward, their hands on the hilts of their short swords. The inference was clear: his choice was obedience or arrest."You will wait here," Hale said, his tone returning to its dry, administrative monotone. "The Council will review your… situation. Don't attempt to leave."He rose, and the other council members rose with him, making their way through a side door into a private antechamber. The heavy oak door groaned closed, and Alexander was left to himself and the two guards. The air was stifling. He could feel the weight of the institution bearing down on him, a machinery that was designed to grind away at individuality and impose conformity. His Truth-Sense hummed with the residual energy of their rejection—a smug, immovable

The bell tower was no longer a place of peace; it was a prison. The city's hatred clung to the air in a palpable mist, and Alexander felt its acidic bite even many stories up above the pavement. The orange blips of his pursuers on his Bio-Scry screen increased in number, their search patterns more coordinated. He was a rat in a city's corridors that wanted him eliminated.But the infected stayed on. The Crimson Bloom still smoldered. The aching black star of Patient Zero on his inner map was an annoying reminder of where the corruption had originated. He could not attack it head-on—not yet, not unless he knew what it was. But he could not stay hidden while individuals died, their faith in him coalescing into fear or worse, dissipating into apathy.He began to shift under cover of darkness, a phantom in the plague-tainted darkness. Sophia was his sole link with the world beyond, her face etched with deeper furrows of worry as she risked the ascent to bring food and news to him."They'r