The Ashen Healer

Chapter 7

Thump. Thump. The sound was slow. It was too slow.

Evans lay on his back. The ground beneath him was hard and uneven. Sharp rocks dug into his skin, but he could barely feel them. The pain was distant now. It felt like a heavy blanket covering his body.

He tried to take a deep breath. He failed. His chest felt like it was filled with water. A wet, gurgling sound came from his throat.

My lung, Evans thought. His mind was surprisingly clear. It was the clarity of a doctor looking at a patient. Punctured left lung. Internal hemorrhage. Rib fractures—at least three. Probable rupture of the spleen.

He analyzed his own death. He knew the timeline. He had minutes, maybe less.

Above him, the sky was a dull, angry gray. Clouds moved slowly, indifferent to the man dying below. The edges of his vision began to blur. Darkness crept in from the sides, making the world look like a tunnel.

He tried to move his hand. His fingers twitched. That was all. He could not lift his arm. He could not wipe the blood that ran from his forehead into his left eye.

Is this it?

The question floated in his mind.

Memories began to flash. They were not big, heroic moments. They were small things.

He saw the face of an old woman. Mrs. Gable. She had an infection in her leg that no one else could fix. The other doctors wanted to cut the leg off. Evans had stayed up for three nights. He mixed herbs. He cleaned the wound every hour. She walked out of the clinic on her own two feet. She had given him a bag of apples as payment.

He saw a little boy. The boy had swallowed a coin. He was choking, turning blue. The mother was screaming. Evans didn’t think. He acted. He saved the boy. The silence after the coin came out, followed by the boy’s loud cry, was the best sound Evans had ever heard.

Faces. Hundreds of faces. Patients he had healed. Lives he had extended.

He waited.

He listened.

The wind howled through the ravine. A crow cawed somewhere high above.

Where are they?

Evans’s heart squeezed. This pain was not physical. It was sharper than the broken ribs.

He had dedicated his life to the sect. He had healed their warriors. He had tended to their elders. He had never asked for much. He only wanted to belong.

Now, he was broken at the bottom of a cliff.

He strained his ears. He wanted to hear footsteps. He wanted to hear a voice calling his name. “Evans! Hold on! We are coming!”

But there was only the wind.

Silence.

They were not coming. They knew he fell. They probably watched him fall. And they walked away. To them, he was just a tool that had broken. You do not climb down a cliff to save a broken hammer. You throw it away and buy a new one.

A tear leaked from his good eye. It was hot against his cold skin. It mixed with the blood on his cheek.

"Alone," he whispered. The word was a bubble of blood that popped on his lips.

The unfairness of it burned. He had saved them. Who would save him?

Thump.

Thump.

The space between the beats grew longer. The darkness in his vision grew wider. The gray sky became a tiny circle of light.

He was not just dying. He was being discarded. 

The blood continued to flow. It soaked through his torn shirt. It pooled under his back. It was warm, the only warm thing in this cold ravine.

It trickled down the side of the rock and touched the earth.

The soil here was dry and cracked. It was old earth, untouched for centuries. It was thirsty.

As Evans’s blood touched the dirt, something happened.

At first, it was just a shiver. Evans thought it was his own body shaking from the cold shock. But he couldn't move.

The shiver came from below.

The ground vibrated. It was a low hum, like a giant engine waking up deep underground.

The pool of blood under him did not dry up. It seemed to boil.

Heat.

A sudden, intense heat rose from the dirt. It wasn't the heat of fire. It didn't burn his skin. It felt like... life. It felt like pure, concentrated energy.

The heat moved. It traveled up from the soil, seeking the source of the blood. It touched the wound on his back.

Evans gasped—a wet, rattling sound.

The energy rushed into him. It entered his veins.

Usually, veins carry blood. Now, his veins felt like they were carrying lightning.

It hurt. It was a different kind of pain. The pain of the fall was a dull ache. This pain was sharp and demanding. It felt like his blood was being boiled and replaced.

Thump-thump.

His heart gave a double beat, surprised by the sudden surge.

Evans’s eyes snapped open. The tunnel vision widened slightly.

He could feel the ground. He didn't just feel it against his skin; he felt connected to it. It was as if roots were growing from his back, digging deep into the planet.

This isn't the Sect's magic, Evans thought dimly.

The Sect used pills and meditation. They used 'Qi' from the air. This was different. This was raw. This was dirty and ancient.

It felt like a key turning in a lock that had been rusted shut for a thousand years.

The heat traveled to his chest. It wrapped around his failing heart. It squeezed.

Thump.

Stronger this time.

In his mind, a door opened. It was a door he didn't know he had. It wasn't something he learned in medical school. It wasn't something the Sect taught him.

It was in his DNA. It was in the marrow of his bones.

His father? His mother? He never knew them. He was an orphan picked up by the Sect. They told him he was nobody. They told him he came from nothing.

They were wrong.

The ground pulsed again, harder this time. Dust danced around his body. The rocks shifted. The earth seemed to be trying to push him up, or perhaps pull him in.

The heat reached his brain.

His vision turned red. Then gold. Then, the world disappeared completely.