“UNNN—AHHHH!”

  A raw cry shattered the stillness, wrenching every gaze back toward the bed. The woman’s face twisted in agony, her hands clawing at the sheets as another wave of pain wracked her body.

  Llana was already beside her, hand gripping the woman's tightly. Her other hand hovered just over her swollen stomach—poised with intent, fingers trembling slightly.

  A soft green light pulsed once at her palm.

  Then faded.

  Llana’s breath hitched. Her eyes flicked sideways—just for an instant—toward the corner of the room where the Chamberlain stood, his monocled gaze far too observant.

  She closed her hand, fingers curling inwards to extinguish what remained of the glow.

  “Chase!” Llana snapped, the urgency returning in full force. “Clean water. And put that cloth under her head before she starts seizing again!”

  Chase jumped, nearly dropping the towel already in her hands as she rushed away from the Chamberlain towards the table. She fumbled with the basin, her earlier curiosity drowned beneath the swell of urgency.

  “Almost there, Usra,” Llana said, quieter now, her voice softening as she leaned closer to the woman. Her grip steadied. “Just a little more. Focus on breathing—nothing else.”

  The woman whimpered, then groaned again, her body coiling tight as she pushed with everything she had.

  Llana moved quickly. She lifted the edge of the sheet covering the lower half of the woman’s body, ducking beneath it with swift, practiced motion.

  Seconds passed—long, stretched, holding a silence just a breath too long.

  Then Llana emerged again, her arms cradling something small, wet, and limp. An infant, no bigger than her forearm, its skin faintly purple and eerily still.

  “Tetsu.”

  Surprisingly, it was the name of the giant which came sharp and sudden from Llana’s lips, turning toward the grey-eyed boy.

  Without a word, he stepped forward, understanding her intent before she had to explain. He crouched by the edge of the bed, eyes briefly meeting the mother’s panicked ones before he lifted a hand—two fingers outstretched—and pressed them gently against the umbilical cord.

  There was a faint shimmer at his fingertip. A pulse of silver light, no brighter than a star seen through heavy fog.

  With a motion no more forceful than slicing through mist, the cord split cleanly.

  Chase blinked, stunned by the sight. She felt her jaw slack as it hung agape before the sight.

  Even the Chamberlain let out a low hum of interest. “Hmm...” he murmured. “...I’d not have expected such precision from a Deta boy.”

  Llana said nothing.

  She remained still, too still, as she looked down at the infant in her arms.

  A child too silent.

  Too still.

  Her jaw tightened.

  And then—softly, like the cracking of an old stone under weight—a voice rose from the bed behind her.

  “Why... isn’t he crying?” the woman rasped, her voice no stronger than paper.

  Llana didn’t answer right away.

  She just stood there, holding the child close—too close. As if proximity alone might lend him breath. As if she could will warmth into his still chest. But the weight in her arms was too quiet.

  Too still.

  She felt it slipping already—the cold seeping in beneath the soft skin. And still, she knew. You can fix this, whispered the voice inside her.

  Her hand hovered, fingers trembling slightly above the infant’s chest. A flicker of green shimmered there. A pulse of light—soft, yet snuffed out.

  She could do it. Push the energy through the lungs, into the heart. Stir the life that had been stillborn. Perform the kind of miracle she had dreamed of being able to do.

  But miracles weren't quiet.

  And the Chamberlain was still watching.

  She could feel his eyes at her back like a brand pressed to her skin. Cool, casual, dissecting. She didn’t have to turn around to know his expression. She’d seen it before—on courtiers and councilors and worse. The gaze that fell upon a monster, a war waiting to happen.

  Her mother’s voice echoed, unbidden.

  Keep your head low, Llana. Your gift is your mark. They'll always recognize it...

  Her throat tightened.

  If they knew, she thought, they’d find her.

  She felt Chase’s gaze now too—confused, hopeful. Expecting something. She knew what Llana was capable of.

  The baby shifted slightly—only from the weight of her hand. No breath. No heartbeat.

  Another flicker of green rose—and then dimmed. Her squinted eyes narrowed to near shut.

  She could save him.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  And she wouldn’t.

  Because if she did, she would lose everything. The years she’d spent hiding. The thin, fragile freedom she had managed to find for herself --for those around her.

  If she exposed herself now, it wouldn’t just be her life.

  It would be theirs.

  All of them.

  She should’ve never come here.

  She should’ve died on that day.

  Her breath caught.

  The child in her arms was growing cold.

  She gritted her teeth and lowered him gently—so gently—into the basin beside the bed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said aloud.

  She meant it.

  Not to the mother.

  Not even to the child.

  But to herself.

  Because once again, she had chosen to survive.

  It was only the Chamberlain and the Village Chief who remained still—indifferent, or perhaps simply detached. The grief hadn't touched them the way it had the others.

  On the bed, the woman had folded in on herself, arms covering her face as though to block out the world. Her shoulders trembled, silent sobs racking her body. She couldn’t bring herself to look.

  Tetsu stood close, unmoving. His fists clenched, jaw locked, eyes cast downward—like he wanted to crush something but had nothing to break but the moment itself.

  Chase glanced toward the window. Three faces were pressed to the glass—Arton, Roan, Rafal—watching with a kind of helpless dread. The room had grown heavy. Thicker than silence. Denser than grief.

  Llana’s voice broke through it, hoarse and frayed. “Usra… I-I’m sorry… I—”

  “C-can I try something?”

  It wasn’t planned.

  Chase hadn’t meant to speak, not really. The words just slipped out—low, unsure, cutting through Llana’s apology like a pebble tossed into still water.

  Llana turned slowly. Her eyes, rimmed red, widened just slightly.

  Before Chase had even realized it, she was standing at the center of the room—face to face with the stillborn silence in Llana’s arms. Her eyes locked on the infant’s brow, where that strange gray fog still hovered, just as it had before.

  It didn’t make sense. She didn’t understand it. Couldn’t explain it.

  But she felt it.

  Felt like she could push it away.

  “What do you mean, try something?” Llana's voice rose—not sharp, exactly, but strained. There was something under it, something that cracked as it tried to hold shape.

  Chase flinched slightly. “I—I just thought maybe—”

  “If there’s anything you can do,” Usra's voice broke through, sudden and raw, “please. I’ll do anything. Just—save him.”

  Llana didn’t look at her. Her eyes stayed on Chase.

  "Chase, this isn't—" Her voice caught. She stopped. Started again, quieter. “You don’t know what you're doing. You're only being cruel-”

  “I don’t care!” Usra cried, her voice rising now, cracking under the weight of grief. “She’s being cruel to me? So what!? We just sit here and do nothing? He’s already gone if we do!”

  Her face was wet with tears, but her eyes didn’t waver from Llana’s.

  Silence stretched again.

  Llana's gaze hovered on the infant for a moment longer, her lips parting—then closing again.

  She didn’t argue anymore.

  A second passed. Then, finally, she shifted.

  Hesitation clung to every movement as she turned the child over, cradling him once more, then slowly… passed him into Chase’s arms.

  Chase felt the weight—light, too light. Cold. Still.

  Llana glared at her, a fiery reproach appearing ready to escape her trembling lips at any moment. Meanwhile, Usra directed a gaze bearing the heavy weight of expectation towards her. Chase felt a stinging anxiety burning its way through her heart as she received the two women’s sentiments. A small feeling of helplessness enveloped her as she finally came face to face with the child, seeing how pale and lifeless it had truly become. Many thoughts flooded her mind—thoughts telling her she never should have stepped forward in the first place, that she should have stayed a silent observer. But it only took one glance at the hand of the infant, its frail fingers quivering delicately as it clung on desperately to life, to expel those thoughts from her mind.

  In an almost subconscious motion, she brought her hand up to the infant’s temple, her palm hovering steadily over the fog enveloping its head. She recalled the sight of Llana’s hands emitting their green hue, the color faintly coloring her wrists and forearm before emerging from the center of her palm, as she had seen many times before.

  Picturing the green hue, she felt a strange tugging sensation on the bridge of her nose—not quite on the surface of her skin, or even behind the whites of her eyes, but somewhere far more ethereal, yet far more real than anything she had felt up until that point.

  She focused her attention firmly on the light in her mind, each ray of the luster becoming apparent to her as if they were many strands of colored string. She watched as the green threads slowly shifted to a golden red. At the same time, a familiar -and yet foreign memory returned to her psyche.

  It was cold. Though she had tried to open her eyes, the sight of the white-blushed world around her only stung them, forcing her to shut them again. As she did so, she began to recall all manner of agony. The faint stinging of her frozen wounds, the ache of bruised and disjointed muscles, the piercing heat of ice shards embedded deep in her palms. The pain ate away at her body as she lay there in the snow. She felt then that she would truly die.

  But then it came.

  An angelic light. Originally a brilliant gold in color, yet tainted now with a bright red that she felt—intrinsically—had come from herself. The light painted the insides of her shuttered eyes in its hue, enveloping her with the same sensation she now felt emitting from her palms as she opened her eyes to look down at the child in her arms.

  As that light had once enveloped her, buried in that lonely heap of snow, her agony had faded. Her afflictions had begun to dissolve at a pace that felt almost impossible.

  She channeled that memory now.

  And as she did, the same rose-gold light poured from her hands. It filled the room in waves—brighter, more palpable than anything Llana had ever produced. The color shone fiercely, spilling through the clinic like a flood of starlight. The most dazzling of it sank gently into the body of the child in her arms. Her eyes burned with warmth as the gray fog masking the child’s temple became clearer—defined in sharp contrast now that it was fading.

  She watched as the fog dispersed, lifting into the air in tendrils, evaporating against the golden hue like smoke chased from a flame.

  Chase remembered how her own body had been healed by this same light. How she had fallen back into peaceful slumber. And how, later, she had awoken to the three curious silhouettes who brought her here.

  The faces of all those watching the scene were frozen in awe, their eyes wide and unblinking—as though afraid they might miss even a second of the unencumbered miracle unfolding before them.

  Llana’s gaze was the most stark of all. Her eyes were stretched open in full, focused and unmoving, the glint within them catching the reflection of the golden glow. It danced in her irises like sunlight on glass.

  Then, with a sudden cry, the group watched as a pink tone bloomed across the child’s skin—a healthy glow spreading rapidly across his limbs. Within seconds, the infant wriggled in Chase’s arms, snorting, until the first full cry rang out. Loud. Alive. A plea for life that filled the room.

  And then—slowly—the light began to fade.

  The cabin returned to its familiar shades of brown and gray, the miracle dissolving like mist.

  Llana watched on with a confounded expression as Usra desperately snatched the child from Chase’s offering arms. The mother cried out in happiness as she pulled him close to her chest.

  “Thank you! Thank you. Thank you…”

  She could only repeat the words, over and over, as she cradled the infant against her—her sobs now ones of joy.

  The gold hue finally flickered out from Chase’s eyes as she watched the scene, pride warming her otherwise tired expression. She felt the heat dissipate from her vision, the world slowly returning to its normal, muted tones.

  Tetsu stared at her with wide eyes—fierce, unblinking. It was only when she turned to meet his gaze that he quickly looked away, cheeks flushing an uncharacteristic red.

  “What…” Llana stepped forward cautiously, her voice lower now, a quiet mixture of disbelief and concern. Her eyes were fixed on the white-haired girl, half mesmerized, half suspicious. “...did you just do?”

  Before Chase could answer, her heel dug faintly into the wooden floor beneath her with a soft clack. She swayed, clearly struggling to stay upright as her knees buckled under her.

  “I’m… tired…” she mumbled at last, voice faint.

  Then, she collapsed limply, the world going dark around her.