Towan stared at his bandaged leg, the master’s words echoing in his mind. “Start with 61%.” He’d leaped to 100% like a fool, ignoring every lesson.
The infirmary’s afternoon light slanted through the windows, painting the walls in amber stripes that trembled with the rustle of Towan’s sheets as he hastily tucked Rheon’s vial beneath his pillow. The movement sent a jolt of pain through his bandaged leg, and he bit back a hiss just as the door swung open.
Alira burst in first, her energy crackling like summer lightning. “LOOK WHO’S ALIVE!” she crowed, flinging herself onto the foot of Towan’s bed. The frame groaned in protest.
Sylra lingered in the doorway, her sharp eyes sweeping the room—the rumpled sheets, Towan’s white-knuckled grip on the pillow, the faint indigo glow seeping through the linen. Her lips quirked, but she said nothing.
“We crossed Elliot in the hall,” Sylra remarked, gliding to the window. Her fingers brushed the sill, dislodging a mote of dust that glittered in the sunlight. “He mentioned you were… lucid enough for visitors.”
Towan’s ears burned. Sylra’s gaze lingered on his bandaged leg, her usual aloofness softened by something almost like concern. Or pity. He hated both.
“That was AMAZING!” Alira jabbed a finger at him, her voice bouncing off the stone walls. “You looked like a comet! Silver aura, boom! Rheon flying like a ragdoll! Do you know how many betting pools you just wrecked?”
“Alira,” Sylra interjected dryly, “the healers said his eardrums are still fragile.”
“Oh. Right.” Alira lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But seriously—breaking Rheon’s arm? That’s going in the academy chronicles. Maybe even the town drunk’s ballads.”
Towan blinked. “Wait, his arm actually…?”
“Shattered,” Sylra confirmed, turning from the window. “Indigo Essentia isn’t just for show. Healers said it was a clean fracture—impressive, given his… durability.”
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A beat passed. Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed, and Towan’s hand drifted unconsciously to the hidden vial.
“You outsmarted him,” Sylra added, her tone deliberate. “Used his own predictability against him. Most students just flail at him and hope.”
Alira snorted. “Most students don’t have a death wish. Or a brother who’s a walking Essentia calculator.”
“Hey,” Towan protested weakly, but a grin tugged at his lips. “It was worth it to wipe that smug look off his—”
The vial pulsed beneath the pillow, sudden and ice-cold. Towan stiffened, his grin faltering.
Sylra’s eyes narrowed. “You alright?”
“Peachy,” he lied, forcing a shrug. “Just… tired.”
“Right!” Alira hopped up, oblivious to the undercurrents. “We’ll leave you to your ‘tiredness.’ But you owe me details later. All the details.”
As they turned to leave, Sylra paused at the door. “Oh, and Towan?” She glanced back, her gaze piercing. “Next time, check your corners. Wasted energy makes for pretty auras… and pretty targets.”
The door clicked shut.
Towan exhaled, retrieving the vial. The indigo Essentia swirled violently now, as if agitated by Sylra’s parting words—or her suspicion.
Towan stared at the vial, its iridescent liquid swirling like captured storm clouds. The indigo Essentia pulsed faintly, threads of silver light flickering within—too familiar, yet warped by an undercurrent of frost.
“All right,” he muttered, throat dry. “Let’s drink this thing… It’s supposed to help. Right?”
The liquid hit his tongue, cold and electric, like winter lightning. It slithered down his throat, spreading tendrils of numbness that burst into a thousand pinpricks of heat as it reached his stomach. Towan gasped, fingers clawing at the sheets as the Essentia unfolded inside him.
“Master’s warmth… but colder. Sharper.”
The energy surged through his meridians, a glacial river carving paths through scorched earth. His injured leg ignited—not with pain, but with a paradoxical burning chill as the Essentia knitted fractured bone and mended shredded channels. He watched, half-horrified, as the bandages over his calf darkened with expelled toxins, the skin beneath glowing faintly indigo.
“Huh,” he breathed, flexing his toes. “Feels like… someone’s stitching me back together with frozen thread.”
The relief was undeniable. The constant throb in his leg dulled to a whisper, his Essentia channels humming with alien vitality. But beneath the surface, something crawled—a lingering coldness pooling in his dantian, subtle and patient.
“Is this healing…?”
Across the room, the empty vial trembled on the nightstand. A wisp of indigo smoke curled from its mouth, shaping itself into a serpentine coil before dissolving into the dusk-lit air.