All Chapters of The Obelisk of Healing Truths: When History Heals, the World: Chapter 51
- Chapter 60
135 chapters
Chapter 52: A Doctor Accused
The night air was a baptism of freedom and grime. Alexander stood at the end of the alley, the satchel of salvaged knowledge a comforting bulge at his back. The antiseptic quiet of his prison was traded for the city's familiar, anguished symphony—distant coughs, the shout of a pestilence cart, the low, continuous thrum of despair. He was out. But he was not returning to a victory.The Truth-Sense, finally unleashed, swept over the city like a tidal wave. He felt the Echo Fevers flooding out, their corrupted, vengeful imprints spreading. He felt the lingering toxin of the false tinctures still seeping through desperate channels. And he felt something new, something sharp and intentional being interwoven in the emotional tapestry of the city: a narrative.It was a story of guilt, meticulously crafted and spread not in pamphlets, but in the correct channels to which citizens were conditioned to have faith. It pulsed from every public crier's rostrum, from every sanctioned news-sheet plas
Chapter 53: Stone vs. Scalpel
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
Chapter 54: The Competing Physician
The public trial had been a success, but success in the Machiavellian dance of Atheria's politics was often nothing more than fertilizer for the next competitor. Amelia's triumph had shamed the Synod, but it had also aroused the attention of another, younger constituency: the city's lay medical community. And among them, it had ignited one man in particular with fiery wrath: Dr. Julian Finch.Finch was the opposite of Amelia. Young, arrogant, and dazzlingly gifted, he was the darling of Atheria's liberal establishment. A boy genius who had studied overseas in the great academies of the Republic, he ridiculed what he called the "superstitious pageantry" of the Theurgists as much as he despised the "unproven mysticism" of the street-corner charlatan who had beguiled the city's highbrows. He was a man who believed in science, in reason, in the empirical method. He did believe in things which were measurable, recordable, and subject to examination by his peers.Amelia, making silent praye
Chapter 55: Proof in Healing
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.
Chapter 56: The Gathering Storm
Winning in the Conclave wasn't an end; it was a burst of a dam. And now, the world was streaming through.Amelia's little clinic, once a dusty, forgotten corner of the Lower Quarters, was now a pilgrimage spot. The line began before dawn broke, a contorted mass of human suffering and desperate hope that wound through the rubbish-lined, narrow streets. Air that once rang with the smell of decay and hopelessness now hummed with a taut, expectant tension. They moved on crippled limbs, with running fevers, with tumors doctors had pronounced as irreversible. They had come because they had heard, or seen, of the man Elias who outwitted death herself.Amelia moved through the throng of bodies like a ghost, her grey robes clammy with sweat and herb-poultice. The Obelisk heavy on her chest, an unceasing and chill weight. With each caress, each deliberate moment of will, she paid out a piece of herself, invested in the ravenous account of the stone. She repaired a child's birth defect heart, th
Chapter 57: Misinformation Cult
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
Chapter 58 : Cursed Remedies
The stillness subsequent to the mob was more chilling than their wrath. Amelia's dramatic parade to the square, her threat of evidence, had startled them for a moment into dry, anticipatory silence. But the Factotum was a strategist who understood the mercurial heart of the crowd. He understood evidence was gradual. Tragedy was quicker.He wheeled. If Amelia wanted to be the bearer of truth, the next truth would be carved on the dead, and her name etched on the knife.It began in the slums of Grimeward, a labyrinth of creaking tenements where hope was something people couldn't pay for. There appeared a new sort of distributor, not a slick Disciple from a storefront, but a harried-looking woman with a kind face and a basket on her arm. She resembled them. She spoke like them."'The Healer in the Grey,' she used to whisper. She understands the Synod is pushing her. They will not allow her to help us much longer. She gave me these to distribute. Her own medication. Free. A gift before th
Chapter 59: Stone Carving Shines
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
Chapter 60: The Healer's Burden
The two assassins were scattered on Amelia's bedroom floor like discarded tools. One was gasping wet, ragged breaths. The other had perished, his body rejecting the cutting-edge chemistry that had controlled him before with such violent intensity. The air was filled with the stench of vomit, ozone, and heavy, sound-dulling smoke that was seeping out into the evening.Sophia stood against the doorway, the cast-iron pan still clutched in her hand by its handle, her knuckles white. She was breathing hard, her eyes wide with shock that was too recent for fear. Amelia sat on the edge of her trashed bed, the cold of the floor seeping up into her thin nightdress. She was clinging to the Obelisk in her hand. It was dead now, an ordinary, dark hunk of stone. But the face of its light—its screaming, raging light—was seared into her retinas and burned into her soul.She had thought she knew the price of her gift. The exhaustion after a long day's work healing. The suspicion in the Synod's eyes.
Chapter 61: A Shadowed Whisper
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