Chapter 65: Aptitude Test (17)
The triage tents buzzed with frantic energy.
White-robed healers moved like wind-whipped ghosts between rows of cots.
The air was thick with the smell of burnt cloth, alchemical ointments, and scorched magic.
Cries and groans rose and fell like waves, some muffled, some hoarse, some barely audible above the shouting of medics barking orders.
“Get me more Etherstitch thread!”
“Hold him steady, his mana lines are flaring again!”
“Who the hell let a kid with a punctured lung sit up?”
It was chaos.
Controlled, but just barely.
And in the middle of it all lay the examinees of Ruby Sector, silent, burned, bruised, broken, and alive.
One girl had her leg encased in shimmering crystal to keep it still while her bones reformed.
Another boy was locked in a convulsive fit, his body rejecting a backlash of mana from an overextended spell.
Nearby, Stella cried openly while a healer stitched the inside of her arm back together with a thread of light.
Corin, despite cracked ribs and a concussion, kept sitting up and arguing with the staff, refusing to lie still until Balt and Lucien were seen first.
Balt was pale.
His left arm had been fractured in three places, and he drifted in and out of consciousness while muttering half-coherent phrases about “elemental overpressure” and “not my fault the lion exploded.”
One healer muttered, “He’s the second worst I’ve seen today.”
Another glanced down the row.
“…The worst being that poor bastard.”
At the farthest end of the tent, surrounded by isolation curtains, muffling enchantments, and a sense of reverent dread, lay Lucien.
Burned.
Frostbitten.
Mana-scorched so deeply the healing spells had to be rotated in shifts to keep his life force from unraveling.
“How is he still alive?”
No one had an answer.
***
The world came back in fragments.
A slow, woozy return to existence.
Blinding white light.
The soft rustle of cloth.
The gentle trickle of water from a basin.
The faint echo of quiet footsteps on stone floors.
Lucien stirred.
And pain, dull and distant, flickered across his body like old memories.
His eyes fluttered open.
The ceiling above him was a pale canvas of fabric, fluttering slightly with a breeze that didn’t quite exist.
His limbs didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
He couldn’t feel them.
Not really.
Everything felt...numb.
He blinked against the blur in his vision.
A soft voice reached him, clear, warm, and gentle like the quiet hum of dawn.
“You’re awake.”
Lucien turned his head.
Slowly.
Every movement felt like swimming through syrup.
A figure stood beside him.
A nurse.
She wore a pristine white robe trimmed with pale silver thread, the sleeves fitted tight past the elbows to keep from dragging through blood or salves.
Her face was mostly hidden beneath a cloth medical mask, the kind that covered her nose and mouth.
Her hair, a muted chestnut, was tied in a tidy bun at the base of her neck, not a strand out of place.
Only her eyes were visible.
And they were kind.
Amber-gold, flecked with streaks of pale bronze.
They crinkled at the corners slightly as she looked down at him, smiling without lips, only with her gaze.
“You’re in the Ruby Sector medical camp,” she said softly, setting aside a bundle of used bandages soaked with pink-stained salves.
“You’ve been unconscious for nearly a full day. And from the looks of it… you’ve been through hell.”
Lucien’s lips parted.
His throat felt like sandpaper.
His voice came out hoarse and cracked.
“…Where… am… I…?”
She leaned closer, her voice even softer now.
“Safe. For now. Healing. You were in very bad shape. Full-thickness burns, multiple fractures, mana backlash in the nerves and lungs. Some frostbite. Some internal tearing. We’ve stabilized most of it.”
Lucien blinked.
She laughed gently.
“Yes. I’m aware that sounds worse when listed all together.”
He struggled to breathe.
“How is the pain? On a scale of one to ten?”
She paused.
“You should be screaming.”
“…Feels… numb.”
She nodded.
“That’s the tinctures. And your body entering shock. But numb is good for now.”
Lucien’s eyes focused a little more.
He saw her hands gently lift the edge of the dressing along his arm.
Underneath, raw skin puckered with burns and angry red magic scars peeked through before she quickly covered them again.
He groaned.
She murmured something reassuring and reached for a small bowl of salve.
“I’m going to change your dressings. Just relax.”
Lucien tried to nod. It came out as more of a blink.
As she worked, her touch was featherlight.
Efficient, but never rushed.
Her fingers moved with the confidence of long practice, dabbing, wrapping, binding with reverent care.
“…Thank you,” Lucien rasped.
She paused. Just for a moment.
And those amber eyes softened.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and from the slight crease at the corners of her eyes, he could tell she was smiling beneath the mask.
The bandage change completed, she gently placed her hands over his chest.
And then.
Light.
A pale golden glow enveloped her palms, soft and muted, like the first rays of sunlight brushing the horizon after a long, starless night.
The warmth seeped into Lucien’s skin.
Not hot.
Not overwhelming.
Just… warm.
Like he was being told, without words, ‘You made it. You're safe now.’
The light pulsed, slow and steady.
His body, scorched and broken, seemed to exhale with him, just a little.
And as he drifted back toward sleep, lulled by the magic.
***
Lucien blinked slowly, his breath shallow, but steady now.
The golden glow from the nurse’s hands spread through his chest, flowing into the battered spaces between breath and blood.
His body was still wrapped in layers of pain, but the sensation wasn’t sharp anymore, it was distant, like thunder grumbling far off over a still sea.
He looked up at her, voice rough with exhaustion.
“…What… are you doing?”
The nurse glanced down at him, her glowing hands still hovering just above his ribs.
The corners of her amber eyes crinkled again in that gentle smile he was learning to recognize.
“Is it easing your discomfort?”
She asked softly.
Lucien took a moment to search for an answer, each word peeling from his throat like it had to be coaxed out.
“…Yeah,” he rasped.
“Feels… better. Like…”
He trailed off, squinting toward the top of the tent.
“…Like a wave. A warm one. Breathing in and out of me.”
She let out a quiet laugh.
A real one this time, not a nurse’s polite chuckle, but a sound touched with something genuine.
“That’s a lovely way to put it,” she murmured.
“It’s healing magic. Basic-grade. Gentle and rhythmic.”
Lucien blinked at her slowly.
“...simple. But deep.”
“It is,” she said, shifting her hands slightly.
The glow pulsed once more, golden light sliding down to his abdomen, where the worst of the internal bruising lay.
“Normally we’d use high-tier spells for someone as injured as you… but your body’s in a mana-rejection state. Scorched too badly. The channels are brittle.”
She paused, her voice softening.
“If we forced stronger magic in… your insides might tear. Or the scorching would deepen. This, though, this little spell… it coaxes the body to remember how to heal. A little at a time.”
Lucien let her words wash over him like the spell itself.
He didn’t respond at first.
Just breathed.
“…Doesn’t… sound very…,” he murmured, eyelids drooping.
“Tiny spell… gentle...”
Her eyes warmed again, almost amused.
“It has saved more lives than any grand incantation. There are times when this simple spell was all a healer could cast, even then it brought comfort to those suffering. Smallest of warmth can bring comfort at times of need.”
He blinked up at her, his vision blurry again, but this time from sleep.
The faint light of her magic swirled through his body, drawing fatigue from where it had pooled, lifting it away with the softness of breath through curtains.
“…That wave again,” he whispered, half to himself.
“In… out… like it’s breathing for me…”
She watched as his head tilted slightly, his words slowing, dissolving at the edges.
His lashes fluttered once.
Then again.
The rhythm of his breathing deepened.
His mouth still moved, trying to speak, even as sleep pulled him under.
“…You’re… nice…”
She chuckled, so softly it barely reached his ears.
Then she lowered her hands, the golden glow fading like dusk.
She reached for the blanket at the foot of the cot and drew it gently over him, careful to avoid disturbing the fresh bandages.
One hand lingered on the edge of the sheet, smoothing out a corner.
Lucien had already drifted.
Peaceful now.
The storm behind him.
The warmth within him.
The nurse turned quietly, her robe whispering against the canvas floor.
She stepped out of the tent with a practiced grace, the flap rustling shut behind her.
She didn’t look back.
But as she walked away, the soft golden hue of her magic still clung faintly to her fingertips, like morning light.
***
