The sutures surrendered without resistance—too easily, in fact. They hadn't had time to marry themselves to flesh, the tissue around them already turning traitor. As I coaxed theincision open, the smell ambushed me. Not the full assault of advanced rot, but unmistakable all the same—that sickly-sweet perfume of infection establishing its kingdom.
"Damn," I breathed.
The superficial layers whispered promises of hope, but deeper down, the truth revealed itself in angry red lightning strikes radiating through muscle that had darkened to the color of old bruises. Small pockets of fluid were gathering like conspirators in shadowed corners.
"This is why he's not getting better." The words escaped before I could catch them, confession and diagnosis tangled together. "The infection's deeper than I thought."
My fingers found the irrigation syringe—absurdly primitive, almost laughable compared to the pressurized systems I'd trained with. But here, in this candlelit room that smelled of herbs and hope, it would have to be enough.
"Hot water," I said to Ruka, whose attention hadn't wavered from my hands. "Not boiling any longer, but hot. Clean."
He moved with surprising grace for someone his size, returning with a pitcher that sent tendrils of steam curling into the air. I drew the water up and began the delicate work of irrigation, each squeeze of the bulb sending a controlled stream through the wound cavity. The water emerged pink, then darker, carrying away the evidence of infection like a river washing clean.
Morg held the bowl with unwavering hands, her face betraying nothing even as the contaminated fluid splashed against wood.
Again. Draw, squeeze, flush. The tissue began to reveal its true colors, the worst of the purulent material surrendering to the current. Just a few more passes, I promised myself. Just a few more to be certain.
I squeezed the bulb once more, watching water pool and drain in hypnotic rhythm—
Plink.
The sound was barely there, a whisper of solid meeting wood beneath the liquid symphony, but it might as well have been a gunshot.
My hands went still. "Wait."
I set the syringe down with exaggerated care and caught Morg's eye, pointing to the wound, then to a clean cloth. "Hold this here. Pressure." I demonstrated, my gloved fingers pressing the fabric against the incision.
Understanding flickered across her face. She took the cloth and held it firm against the wound, blood beginning its slow bloom through the weave, but her grip never faltered.
I lifted the bowl from her hands like it contained something precious and fragile—which, in a way, it did. My heart hammered against my ribs as I carried it to the window, where dusk was painting the world in shades of purple and dying gold.
I tilted the bowl, letting the bloody water slosh to one side, and there—caught against the curved wood like a secret finally told—was a fragment of something. Tiny. No bigger than a pinhead, maybe smaller. Dark and irregular, with one edge that caught the fading light just so.
Not metal. Stone.
The pieces fell into place with devastating clarity. Ruka had found Ardin bleeding in the grass. When he'd fallen, or when they'd moved him, this tiny invader must have slipped into the wound. So small I'd missed it during the initial surgery, buried deep in traumatized tissue where it had been sitting like a splinter in the body's eye—too small to expel, too foreign to ignore. The perfect foundation for bacteria to build their empire.
"Oh my God," I whispered. "That's it. That's why the infection wouldn't clear."
Relief crashed over me like a wave, followed immediately by guilt's undertow. Relief that I'd found it. Guilt that it had been there all along, hiding in plain sight while Ardin suffered.
I carried the bowl back to the bed, angling it so Ruka could see the tiny fragment. "This was still inside him. It was causing the infection."
His eyes widened, comprehension dawning like sunrise, and he spoke rapidly to Morg in their rolling tongue. She lifted the cloth to look at me, and something shifted in her expression—respect, perhaps, or the beginning of trust.
I set the bowl aside with trembling hands and returned to Ardin, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves. The latex stretched tight across my knuckles. "Now we finish this properly."
With the fragment removed, the wound revealed itself like a map I could finally read. There—pockets of tissue that had surrendered to infection, darkened and angry. And there—areas where the body had tried to wall off the invader, creating barriers that would never heal cleanly. All of it had to go.
The scalpel found my palm again, an extension of my will. I began to debride with surgical precision, each cut deliberate, each decision weighted. Too little and the infection would return like a vengeful ghost. Too much and the wound would gape, refusing to close. The balance lived in my fingertips, in years of training that had become muscle memory.
Morg leaned in, her shadow falling across Ardin's torso. She watched with the intensity of a student memorizing sacred text, then moved without prompting—a clean cloth appearing in her hand exactly when I needed it, dabbing away blood before it could obscure my view. We fell into a rhythm, her movements anticipating mine with uncanny accuracy.
When only pink, healthy tissue remained, I irrigated one final time, watching the clear fluid carry away the last traces ofcontamination. Then I reached for my suture kit, the familiar weight of it grounding me.
"Almost done," I murmured, more to myself than anyone else.
Threading the needle was meditation. The first stitch was prayer. The tissue edges kissed together like they'd been waiting for this reunion, no longer fighting against inflammation and foreign debris. Each suture was a promise—this time, you'll heal. This time, I've given you everything you need.