They arrived with a sigh of displaced air. No fanfare. No warning. Just the tiny twist of light and the quiet that follows something unnatural.
The village greeted them not with people, but with nothing.
Regin stood at the end of the charted roads—so far it had grown into myth and not memory. Forgotten even by time itself. Roofs sagged under the pressure of seasons past. Storefronts obscured with slat-covered wood, windows shrouded in soot and sorrow. The cobblestone street beneath them was cracked into dust and fragments—like memories crushed beneath centuries of silence.
Lindsay looked out the window. "So this is Regin…" she said softly, to herself really.
He didn't reply. Just redistributed the weight in his arms.
The girl blazed hotter now—her fever raging like a fire that had been stoked with bellows. She didn't stir. Her skin was pale, lips blue-rimmed.
"Where is the pharmacy?" he asked. His voice wasn't raised. It didn't need to be. It was icy, contained—like a drawn sword and not yet swung.
She pointed. "That direction. Near the old well."
They went without speaking. Dust was kicked up by their footsteps. A crow cried once off the rooftop, then vanished into the ash-gray air.
At the other end of the street, wedged between the remains of a stone barn and what had once been, apparently, a schoolhouse, was a lopsided, thin shop. Its sign was splintered, half consumed by ivy. By the time they came to it, the door creaked open.
A figure emerged—old, hunched slightly, with hands stained from years of tending wounds and mixing truths into tinctures. He wiped them now on a cloth already marked by history.
He looked up, the beginnings of a greeting on his lips—then froze.
"Lindsay?" His voice cracked under its own weight. "You've returned."
"I'm not here for reunions," she said quickly. "She needs help."
His gaze dropped to the child in the stranger's arms. His brow furrowed. The lines in his face deepened at once.
"Bring her in. Hurry."
The boy didn't move.
The man paused, something unsaid edge-sharpening his gaze. What he saw wasn't fear. It was older than that. Deeper. A distrust turned to reflex and hardened into calc.
Still, the boy held to her.
"He's not like the others," Lindsay said, quietly. "You can trust him.".
A beat passed.
Then he moved, slowly, reluctantly. The boy let go of the girl—but his hands clung on for a fraction of a second too long, as if holding on to something he didn't want to leave in the world's grasp.
The old man nodded and vanished into the store, into the shadows inside.
Lindsay exhaled, tension draining off her shoulders. She turned to speak, but he was already looking at her.
"Thank you."
No smile. No performance. Just truth—raw and unadorned.
She met his gaze, the air between them dense with something unsaid.
"You're welcome," she replied quietly.
Silence fell again. But not the kind that asks to be filled. This one sat heavy. Charged.
After a moment, she asked, "The doctors. Did they suffer?"
His eyes shifted toward the cracked windows of the shop. The shadows moved behind the glass.
"One was dead when I found them."
"And the others?"
"I took them to help her. When they failed, because." he hesitated, not from lack of words but because of them, ".I brought them out of the forest myself."
That was all. No explanation. No excuse.
She didn't ask him. She didn't have to. If he'd meant to do them harm from the start, she knew—he'd never have mentioned them to begin with.
The door creaked. "You'd best come inside," the old man called.
The shop's back room was dark, lit only by a flickering lantern and the dim quiver of light through boarded windows. The air was heavy with the smell of alcohol and dust and herbs left too long in jars. A flat stone slab filled the middle, covered in ancient instruments and shattered vials. The girl was on it, chest rising in shallow, panicked breath.
The old man was already mixing something—a salve or a tincture, rich and rainbow-hued. His hands, wrinkled with age but strong, moved ceaselessly.
"She's been hit with a charm of fever," he whispered to him. "Slow-acting. Stealthy. Almost a curse, but not yet."
The boy did not speak. His eyes were on the child, unwinking. Not watching her—remembering her. Or something through her.
Another child.
Another slab.
Another failure.
Lindsay's voice cut in over the memory. "Are you hearing me?"
He blinked. "Yes."
The old man continued, as if nothing had broken. "This kind of fever has to burn itself out. I'll get her stable, but it'll take time. Three, maybe four days. Maybe more."
The boy still wasn't speaking. His jaw was locked. His position didn't change—but the room did.
The light became darker. A weight pushed into the air.
Mist curled near his feet—first as vapor, then something denser. His fingers curled.
Lindsay stepped back. "Hey. Breathe."
But the unraveling had already begun.
It wasn't rage. Not exactly. It was older. A grief turned inward so long that it no longer needed fire to destroy. It unmade quietly. Like rot. Like gravity.
Reinhard didn't flinch. He didn't even look up.
"You're not helping her by breaking in front of her," he said calmly.
And with it, the tension was broken.
The boy let out a breath. Looked down. At the table again. The tools. The shaking light.
"I'll take everything you need to my place," he said eventually.
Reinhard stumbled. "You have the means?"
The boy did not say anything. He simply extended a hand.
Each one of the instruments shone and vanished—sent elsewhere out of reach. Cabinets empty. Shelves bare. The entire operation moved with precision Reinhard had not witnessed in decades.
When the last thing disappeared, Reinhard whistled low.
"Well then. Haven't seen that kind of accuracy since… the old war."
And then, after a silence as long: "Call me Reinhard."
The boy gazed at him. Blankly.
Reinhard tilted his head. "What should I call you?"
The silence went on longer this time. A moment, then another. Long enough to say a name, if there had been one to say.
At last: "I don't have a name. Call me what you like."
Reinhard did not react. Merely nodded, once.
An understanding silence. A mutual quiet.
Lindsay stabbed at her glyph communicator. The face plate dimmed, and then blazed to life.
"This is Lindsay. I'm safe."
Relief flooded in through the static. "Thank the gods. The chief—"
A second voice cut in: "Return. Now. We need you there."
She shut down the glyph. Her hand trembled a little.
She turned and looked out over Regin.
The village, again, was still.
But not empty.
Not anymore.