The Healer Who Silenced the Gods

Chapter 2: The Banished Healer

Rain slicked the cobblestones like oil. The Grand Hall’s gates loomed behind him, massive and silent.

Erynd stood motionless for a moment, soaked to the bone, before a voice called from the shadows. “Didn’t think they’d throw you out so fast.”

He turned. A thin man in patched robes leaned under an archway, smoking a reed pipe that glowed faintly blue. His name was Torrin, another apprentice, one who’d flunked out two months before.

Erynd’s voice cracked. “They said I defiled the Rite.”

Torrin snorted smoke. “You did bring a corpse back. Not exactly standard practice.”

“I didn’t cast a spell.”

“Yeah,” Torrin said dryly. “That’s what makes it terrifying.”

Erynd’s jaw tightened. “You think I wanted this? You think I wanted him to die twice?”

Torrin stepped closer, his tone dropping. “Listen, I’m not saying you did wrong. I’m saying you made the wrong people nervous. Kael’s been trembling since the moment that corpse breathed. Whatever you touched, it wasn’t from their manuals.”

Erynd shivered. “Then what was it?”

Torrin flicked away the reed. “If I knew, I’d be rich or dead. Probably both.”

They stood in silence for a moment, the rain whispering against stone.

Then Torrin said, “There’s a caravan heading north tonight. They need a medic. Take it. The Hall won’t let you stay in this city. Not after what you did.”

Erynd hesitated. “I can’t just leave”

“You don’t have a choice. Kael’s already spinning stories. By sunrise, they’ll call you a necromancer.”

The word hit like a knife. Erynd looked back at the Hall’s towering spires, the golden sigil of the healers gleaming faintly through the storm. His dream. His home. His failure.

“I just wanted to save him,” he whispered.

Torrin gave a crooked grin. “Then keep doing that. Somewhere else.”

Hours later, the city gates creaked open. The caravan master, a broad woman with one eye and too many knives, glared at him. “You the healer boy?”

“Yes,” Erynd said softly.

“You look more like a drowned rat. You any good?”

“I… I can mend bones and treat fever.”

“You can do it sober?”

“Yes.”

“Then climb aboard.”

He did. By dawn, the city was a blur behind them. The road stretched north, through silver fields and dark hills. The air smelled of wet earth and iron.

Erynd sat by the wagon’s side, clutching his satchel, trying not to think. Then, from inside the wagon, a child screamed. “Out of the way!” the caravan master barked. “She’s burning up!”

Erynd pushed through the crowd. A little girl lay curled on a blanket, her skin pale, sweat pouring down her neck. Her mother was sobbing.

“She was fine last night,” the woman said. “Then she started shaking, please, healer, do something!”

Erynd knelt beside her, heart pounding. “How long has she been like this?”

“An hour.”

He pressed his fingers to the girl’s neck, her pulse raced like a trapped bird. The smell hit him next: metal, decay, and something… wrong. “This isn’t fever,” he murmured. “It’s spreading through her veins.”

The mother gasped. “What does that mean?”

“It means” He stopped. Words failed him. It means she’s dying.

The caravan master’s voice snapped, “Then heal her!”

“I’ll try.”

He opened his satchel, pulling out herbs and bandages, his mind spinning through everything he’d learned.

But as he crushed the herbs between his palms, that same warmth flickered under his skin, the same pulse as before. No. Not here. Not again.

The child whimpered. The warmth grew. He looked down and saw it, thin, faint filaments of light, winding through her body like silk.

Only this time, the threads weren’t frayed, they were rotting. Black veins spreading through the luminous weave. He gasped. “Erynd?” the caravan master demanded. “What are you waiting for?”

“I can see it,” he whispered.

“See what?”

“The sickness. It’s eating her life.”

His hands moved on instinct. He reached out and touched the thread near her heart. The world blurred; everything else fell away.

He wasn’t in the wagon anymore, he was inside her. A world of light and shadow surrounded him, her life-thread trembling like glass. He could feel the infection gnawing at it, like teeth on silk.

He pinched the corruption between his fingers and pulled. It screamed. Then, silence. The warmth snapped back into his chest. The girl gasped and sat up, coughing.

Her mother cried out, clutching her. “You did it! She’s breathing! She’s”

Erynd staggered, clutching his temples. The world spun. His vision dimmed. He barely heard the caravan master say, “Saints above… what are you?”

Later, when the road was quiet again and the girl slept peacefully, the master approached his campfire. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “That wasn’t healing magic.”

Erynd stared into the flames. “No.”

“Then what was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You looked… gone. Like your soul stepped out of your body.”

Erynd didn’t answer. He could still feel it, that echo inside him, like something ancient had stirred awake. The master leaned closer.

“Whatever it is, don’t show it in the open. The wrong eyes see that, you’ll be burned alive before you can explain.”

He met her gaze. “Why warn me?”

“Because I’ve seen power like that once,” she said softly. “Long ago. And it ended with a city on fire.”

He didn’t sleep that night. He sat alone beside the fire, watching the stars fade into the gray of morning.

When he looked down at his hands again, faint golden light glimmered beneath his skin, tracing the shape of a symbol, a circle intersected by seven lines.

He’d never seen it before. He whispered to the dawn, “What am I becoming?”

No answer came. But deep in the distance, far behind the caravan trail, the Grand Hall’s bell tolled once, and an ancient seal in its lowest vault began to crack.