The hall was too bright. Light poured down from the ceiling in sharp white lines that burned against polished steel and glass. Rows of reporters filled the back, their camera lenses blinking like unblinking eyes. The world had come to watch a healer fall.Rick Franklin stood in the center of the tribunal floor. His white coat was gone; they had stripped it from him when they brought him in. A single wrist shackle glimmered around his right arm, the same wrist that still bore the faint, golden mark of the rune. He tried to keep it hidden under the cuff of his plain gray shirt.Yuren Sun sat on the high platform, surrounded by the council of senior healers. His face was calm, carved from stone, but his hands trembled faintly as they rested on the table.The voice of the lead examiner filled the chamber, flat and official. “Dr. Rick Franklin, you stand accused of malpractice, heretical use of forbidden meridian arts, and the death of your patient, Helena Grimes. How do you plead?”Rick

Dark clouds swirled over the Nevada desert like a living storm. The air crackled, sharp with ozone and the smell of rain that refused to fall. Beneath the shifting sand, something pulsed, steady, rhythmic, like the heartbeat of the earth itself.Rick lay half-buried in the crater left by lightning. His body was scorched, skin streaked with ash, but his chest still rose and fell in shallow, trembling breaths. Around him, the sand glowed faintly gold. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious. When he finally stirred, pain spread through every nerve, but underneath the pain was a strange hum, soft and alive, then he heard it. [System reboot: Complete.] [Healer, revived.] The voice wasn’t human. It was calm, balanced, and almost gentle. It spoke not to his ears, but straight into his thoughts. Rick opened his eyes. Lightning flickered overhead, painting the desert in brief flashes of white. He pushed himself upright, sand sliding off his burned coat. “Where… am I?” His

The sun rose over the desert like a wound in the sky. Rick had not slept. He crouched behind the twisted metal of the burned convoy, watching the sand ripple with morning wind. The storm had passed, but the heat was worse. Every breath scraped his throat raw. The System’s voice hummed in his head, calm and steady. [Life-Qi reserves: thirty-four percent.] [Recommendation: locate water, shelter, organic matter.] He gave a dry laugh. “Thanks. I’ll just ask the desert for a glass of water.” [Humor detected. Irrelevant to survival.] Rick ignored it. His legs still ached, but the pain had dulled. The golden veins under his skin pulsed faintly. Each heartbeat reminded him that he should be dead, and wasn’t. He scanned the horizon. The convoy that had passed in the night was gone. Only dust hung in the air. For a moment, he thought he was alone. Then a faint metallic clatter reached his ears. He tensed. Voices followed, faint but drawing closer. “Check the wrecks again!”“Heard

The sun bled over the dunes like a wound that wouldn’t close. Rick moved slowly through the sand, wrapped in torn fabric scavenged from the convoy. The desert wind burned his eyes. His boots crunched on brittle bones half-buried beneath dust. He had been walking since dawn, following tracks, deep, clawed prints that crossed the dunes like scars. “System,” he murmured, “confirm direction.” [Tracking active.] [Movement detected northwest, 1.3 kilometers.] He shaded his eyes. In the distance, a black shape crouched beside the wreckage of another Syndicate transport. Smoke drifted from its twisted hull. “Looks like the scavengers didn’t get here first,” he whispered. [Correction: multiple life signs detected.] Rick knelt behind a dune and peered through the haze. Three shapes moved around the wreckage, beasts, not human. Their skin shimmered like glass, cracked and scarred. Spikes of bone jutted from their spines. One lifted its head, sniffing the air. Its eyes burned fai

Morning came without color. The desert sky was pale and silent, the sand still trembling from the echoes of the night before. Rick sat cross-legged on a rock near the remains of his shelter. His body ached, his mind fogged. The glow under his skin had dimmed, but faint sparks of gold still pulsed at the edge of his vision, constant, alive, waiting. He closed his eyes. The System’s voice broke the silence. [Body status: unstable.] [Qi reserves: seventy-one percent depleted.] Rick exhaled slowly. “Then I need to learn how to control it.” [Affirmative. Control requires understanding of internal rhythm.] He nodded. “Then that’s what we’ll do today.” The wind shifted, carrying sand across his face. He ignored it and pressed his hands together. He focused on the faint hum inside his body, that invisible current that had both saved and nearly destroyed him. For a while, there was nothing. Then, slowly, he felt it, a pulse. Not from his heart, but deeper. A rhythm that match