Chapter 61: Mira Wakes

Chapter 61: Chapter 61: Mira Wakes

Mira woke at 11:14 on a Saturday morning, and the first thing she did was breathe.

Elias was asleep in the chair beside the bed with his neck bent at an angle he’d regret, and the sound woke him. Not a gasp or a cough. Just a long, slow breath in, deeper than he’d heard her take in ten years, and then a long, slow breath out.

He opened his eyes. She was looking at the ceiling.

"Eli," she said. "It doesn’t hurt."

"What doesn’t?"

"Anything." She breathed in again as if testing it, all the way down, and let it go. "My chest. It’s always hurt, like there’s a cold hand on it. Every breath, since I was little. I forgot it wasn’t supposed to." Her voice cracked. "It’s gone."

She lifted her hands off the blanket and turned them over in the morning light. They were thin and pale and a little shaky. That was all. No glow under the skin at the wrists. No faint blue tracery along the veins. Just hands.

"Mirror," she said. "I need a mirror. Please."

Elias went to the nurses’ station. Ruiz was there, on a double shift she’d refused to go home from, and she handed him a compact out of her own handbag without asking what it was for.

Mira held it up with both hands, because one wasn’t steady enough, and tilted it toward her neck. Her collarbone. Her jaw, where the small blue branch had been since she was six.

There was nothing there.

She looked for a long time. She touched her throat with her fingertips, as if the lines might be hiding under the skin and she could feel them. Then she set the compact down on the blanket, very carefully, and pressed both hands over her face.

Elias thought she was crying. Then he realized she was laughing too, both at once, shaking with it.

"I look so normal," she said through her fingers. "Eli, I look so boring."

"You look great."

"I look like a person." She lowered her hands. Her eyes were red and streaming, and she was grinning. "I look like a regular, boring person who’s going to go to school."

Dr. Hollis came at noon with two technicians and a portable mana scanner and ran the scan three times.

The first time, Hollis frowned at the tablet and asked the technicians to recalibrate. The second time, Hollis said nothing at all. The third time, Hollis set the tablet down on the end of the bed, took off a pair of reading glasses, and pressed a thumb and finger to both eyes for a long moment.

"The corruption channels," Hollis said at last, "are gone."

"Gone," Elias repeated.

"Not dormant. Not suppressed. There’s no trace of foreign mana in her at all. The tissue where the channels ran is scarred, the way a riverbed is scarred after the river moves. But it’s empty." Hollis looked at Mira, then at Elias. "Ten years. I’ve read every paper ever written on established gate sickness. There is no recorded case of remission past the second year. None."

"Huh," said Mira. "So I’m famous."

"You’re a miracle that’s going to cost me a great deal of paperwork." Hollis was almost smiling. Then the smile turned professional. "Don’t misunderstand me. You’re not walking out of here tomorrow. Your heart has been working against that mana for a decade, and it’s tired. Your muscles have wasted from years in bed. Physical therapy starts Monday. Sitting up on the edge of the bed first. Standing next week, with help. Then walking with a frame. Then stairs." A pause. "Months, Mira. Not days."

Mira’s grin didn’t falter. "I’ve done ten years," she said. "I can do months."

At the door, Hollis stopped and looked back at Elias.

"Whoever did this," Hollis said quietly, "I’m not going to ask who they are. But if you see them again, tell them thank you."

Elias thought of Lena, asleep in her white-tiled room in the Sanctum, and of Hana, who had slept fourteen hours straight on an empty cot in her tent and was still sleeping.

"I will," he said.

That evening, Tobin cooked.

He’d been planning it for months, Elias realized. Ever since his first night through the Threshold, when he’d heard there was a sick girl in a hospital who couldn’t eat anything that tasted of anything, he’d asked about her every week. What did she like? What had she liked before? He’d been testing recipes in the Kitchen of the Crooked Kettle on the rest of them ever since, and ruthlessly ignoring their opinions.

Then Lena and Hana got involved, which meant an argument.

"Soft," Hana said. "Her stomach hasn’t had real food in years. Nothing rich. Nothing fried."

"Small portions," said Lena. "And go easy on the salt. Her kidneys took a beating."

"Who’s the cook here?" Tobin demanded.

"Who’s the doctor?"

"Who’s the nurse?"

In the end they compromised, which meant Tobin made exactly what he’d planned and then quietly made it softer and smaller and less salty without telling anyone.

He brought it to the hospital on a tray under a clean cloth, and the whole family came with it. Ruiz drew the curtain across the window without being asked ("Cousins," she muttered), and then she stayed.

There were seven of them in a room built for one bed, plus Mira, plus Dex, who’d turned up at six with a bunch of supermarket carnations and a printed stack of the web novels Mira had been reading on her tablet, because he hadn’t known what else to bring. Aveline stood by the door because there was nowhere else to stand. Marcus leaned on the windowsill. Hana sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, still pale, swallowed by Marcus’s sweater. Lena took the only chair, and nobody argued.

Tobin lifted the cloth.

Underneath was a small bowl of golden broth with tiny soft dumplings floating in it, a little dish of rice pudding with honey, and a slice of pear so thin the light came through it.

Mira looked at it for a long time.

"I haven’t eaten anything that wasn’t a nutrition shake in three years," she said.

"I know, love," Tobin said gently. "I asked."

She picked up the spoon. It shook a little in her hand. She took one spoonful of broth, very slowly, and closed her eyes.

Nobody in the room said anything.

When she opened her eyes again, they were wet.

"That," Mira said, "is the best thing I have ever eaten in my entire life."

Tobin burst into tears.

Marcus handed him a handkerchief without looking, as if he’d been holding it ready all evening. "Every time," Marcus said.

Later, when the tray was empty and Mira was demanding that Aveline teach her to hold a sword the minute she could stand, and Marcus was explaining to Dex very seriously why that was a terrible idea, Elias drifted to the window.

The city lights were coming on below. Somewhere out there, gates were opening and closing. Bounties were being posted. A queue was forming at a billing office he would never have to stand in again.

He’d started for one reason. Ten years ago, at 3:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, he’d become the only thing standing between his sister and a bill. Every gate as a porter. Every core sold under the counter. Every night in the dark with a knife. The first summon and every one since. All of it had been for this: the blue lines gone and a spoon in her hand.

It was done.

He waited for the emptiness he’d half expected, the feeling at the top of a long climb when there’s nowhere left to go.

It didn’t come.

Behind him, Mira laughed at something Hana said. Lena muttered a correction. Tobin was still sniffling. Aveline’s armor creaked as she shifted her weight by the door, keeping watch over a room with nothing in it to guard against, because that was what she did. On his wrist, his father’s watch ticked. Hana had given it back that afternoon.

The reason he’d started was finished.

The reason to keep going was sitting around the bed.

Somewhere, seven more people were standing at the end of their worlds, waiting for someone to answer. Somewhere, Councilor Marsh was asking questions. And something out there was still making gates break wrong.

He opened his status for the first time in weeks.

[ STATUS ]

Name: Elias Pierce

Age: 22

Title: Irregular Slayer | Swarm Breaker

Rank: B

Level: 20 | EXP: 310 / 6,500

Class: Assassin [B-Rank] | Threshold Summoner [HIDDEN]

HP: 420 / 420

MP: 215 / 215

STA: 360 / 360

STR: 34 | AGI: 31 | VIT: 27

INT: 33 | PER: 38 | WIL: 34

Unallocated points: 0

— SKILLS —

Threshold Summoning (Active, Unique)

Call a being at the moment of its death in another reality. Slots: 5 / 5. Next slot at Level 25. Bound summon limit: 12. Summon range: 60 m.

Threshold Sanctum (Unique)

A personal dimension for bound summons. Channel: 5 sec. Fragments: 5 (Courtyard of Carrow Keep, Range Four, Kitchen of the Crooked Kettle, Theater Three of St. Agathe’s, Ward Tent at Halden Ford).

Covenant (Passive, Unique)

Gain a weakened echo of each bound summon’s Origin Skill. Echoes: Oathbearer (active), Kill Zone Link (dormant), Beast Cuisine (dormant), Extract and Graft (dormant), Rewind (dormant).

Keen Observation (Passive, Lv. 9)

Patterns, weak points, and tells are easier to notice.

Quick Step (Passive, E)

Agility +60%.

— GRAFTS —

Stoneform (Lv. 1)

Harden your skin to granite. Integrity and coverage grow with level.

— BOUND SUMMONS —

[1] Dame Aveline Rosier | Paladin, Lv. 20 | Origin Skill: Oathbearer

[2] Sgt. Marcus Sinclair | Tactical Gunner, Lv. 20 | Origin Skill: Kill Zone Link

[3] Tobin Ashgrove | Monster Cook, Lv. 20 | Origin Skill: Beast Cuisine

[4] Dr. Lena Lawson | Essence Surgeon, Lv. 20 | Origin Skill: Extract and Graft

[5] Hana Aldren | Chrono Medic, Lv. 20 | Origin Skill: Rewind

— TITLES —

Irregular Slayer: Defeated an irregular boss two or more grades above your rank. +10% damage vs. irregulars.

Swarm Breaker: Defeated a boss that commands a swarm. +10% damage vs. swarm-type monsters.

He read it twice. Then he closed it and went back to his family.