The struggle for the city's soul was not anymore waged in clinics or dark alleys. It was being waged in the field of perception, and Alexander was losing. The demonization campaign of the Guild was a more deadly poison than any plague, and the myth of "Carter's Echo" had infected public awareness. To be labeled with the Fire-Scribe was to become an outcast, to be in peril of being sent away for "metaphysical decontamination.".Retreat was impossible. The Obelisk's wrath still burned within him, a cold, searing flame demanding that something be done about it. But a direct attack would only serve to confirm their story. He had to fight on their terrain. He had to shatter their story not by force, but by an incontrovertible public fact.The opportunity arose from the least likely source: a challenge.It wasn't delivered by Guards, but by a single stoic Guild messenger who left a formal, wax-sealed letter at The Guttering Candle's doorstep. The missive came from the College of Surgeons, t

The atmosphere within the Aethelgard Ministry of Health's main auditorium was a sterile combination of antiseptic, tension, and raw, undiluted contempt. Dr. Alexander Carter stood isolated at the center of the white, highly polished floor. Tiered, judicially raised benches sat the Health Integrity Committee before him. Their faces, lit by the cold glow of overhead lumo-panels, were a hall of hatred and vested interest.At the head of the bench of tiers of low benches sat Minister Valerius, his features a grim face of statesmanlike seriousness that did not extend to his frozen, calculating eyes. Beside him, the florid, self-satisfied visage of Pharmakon Executive Brom, whose corporation's stock price had plummeted since one 'miracle healer' started to cure the incurable without taking so much as one pill. They were the high priests of a broken faith, and Alexander the heretic.Evidence of their failure, and the source of this disgusting spectacle, was on a hospital gurney between them.

The victory over the Synod had given Amelia a dizzy, feverish sort of fame. But within the Atherian environment, fame was merely a parasite foodstuff. While the cult of disease burned hot in the underworld of the city, a quieter growth began to circulate in the daylight: the cult of misinformation.It began subtly. A flyer, poorly printed on low-quality pulp, appeared stuck in doorways and spread out in markets. It contained a rough woodcut of a woman resembling Amelia, her arms held out, but her face was full of shiny, hollow coins. The title: The Obelisk's Truth: A Penny for Your Health?Amelia had never laid eyes on one before when a trembling farmer brought it to her with his ill daughter. "True, Healer?" he asked, quivering. "They say you take a tenth of the wages of a family for a touch. That the rich ones get well first, and the rest of us receive promises."The blood chilled in Amelia's veins. She took the pamphlet, the greasy, smudged ink staining her fingers. It was a master

The victory in the ink-works had been a pebble thrown into a bog. It caused a ripple, and then was engulfed by the deep, stagnant quagmire. Dragging the captured Disciple and the satchel of Silverleaf Nightshade in front of the City Watch only prevented some of the fear from taking hold in the city. The Factotum's story was too powerful, too well-rooted. The Disciple, challenged, only held out her placid mantra of "disclosing truth" until she was dispatched a madwoman. The official account stated it to be the deed of one lone, deranged individual, a conclusion that fulfilled the needs of the authorities for closure but nothing else in order to remove the stain of suspicion from Amelia's name.The waiting line at the clinic dwindled. Those that did appear came in guilty, nervous looks, as though they were going to a gaming house or a bawdy house. There was distrust behind their trust. Amelia's touch, which previously sent only optimistic energy, was now suspect. Would it heal? Was ther

Calmness was the new sound in Amelia's life. It was a weighty, suffocating silence, woven from the absence of Sophia's calming presence, the lack of patients' hushed thanks or cries of pain, and the hollow ring of her own footsteps in the oversized clinic. The siege was raised, traded off for a quarantine of her own creation. The door was barricaded not just against physical harm, but against the hope that once flowed through it. She was a reservoir of potential energy, wound up and waiting to be channeled she couldn't yet see.The Obelisk was her only friend. It no longer burned with its terrible, actinic fire. It was back to its usual self: a cool dark presence against her skin, its inscriptions an empty, unreadable text. But the memory of the warning remained like a ghost haunting the empty rooms. The symbols—the shattered circle, the serpent, the shadow—were etched on the interior of her skull.In the deep quiet, her senses, honed by the stone, began to spin in on themselves. The