Sarissa didn't wake right away.
Mara had carried her, dragged her, really, up from her shop and into the makeshift infirmary she'd carved into the upper floor months ago, when the city's last healer left to form a guild of their own.
The room was dim, lit by blue-glass lanterns and a single emberstone brazier burning low in the corner. Potions, salves, folded linens, and enchanted field wraps were laid out like an armory of care.
Sarissa was pale, and her breathing was shallow, but she was alive.
Barely.
Mara moved like a machine. Efficient and merciless, stripping off cracked armor that immediately vanished into storms of bright sparks as they got swallowed by destruction and oblivion, applying mana compression wraps to stop internal bleedings, mixing elixirs to restart her passive regeneration.
She didn't speak, she didn't even breathe wrong, it was the kind of cold focus she'd learned in the [Mouth of the Abyss], where one second of hesitation meant death.
