The first thing Eliakim felt was the ache.Not the sharp kind that flares and fades — but the deep, marrow-gnawing ache that says you've been broken and put back together.
His eyes opened slowly.Wooden rafters, smoke curling lazily from a hearth, rain tapping on a roof that looked ready to collapse.Somewhere nearby, the low groan of wind pushed through the cracks in the walls.
He tried to move — and stopped.Every limb was wrapped in rough, linen bandages. His ribs ached when he breathed. His head pounded as if the river had never let go.
Shapes lay around him — Gideon slumped against the far wall, an arm in a sling; Caleb motionless save for the rise and fall of breath; Ezra curled on a cot, her face pale and drawn, bandages soaked faintly where mana-burns had blistered her skin.
Eliakim realized with a start — we're alive.But how long? Days? Weeks? The storm had stolen the sky, and the river had swallowed time itself.
Then, movement.
A shadow shifted at the edge of his vision — tall, broad-shouldered, framed in the glow of the fire. The man's face was hidden in shadow, but his hands were steady as they worked, unwinding bloodied wrappings and replacing them with clean strips. His touch was careful but unflinching, pressing down on wounds with a healer's precision.
Eliakim lay still, watching.There was a heaviness to the man — not the fatigue of labor, but the weight of something older, harder to name. The air around him seemed… muted, as if even the rain beyond the hut dared not intrude.
The stranger's fingers moved to Eliakim's arm, checking the tightness of a bandage. They were calloused, but faint burns traced across the knuckles — old, deliberate, like scars carved by ritual.
He didn't speak.Didn't meet Eliakim's gaze.Just kept working, murmuring under his breath words too soft to catch.
Somewhere in the back of Eliakim's mind, the Codex of Imreth flickered, trying to anchor itself after Skyling's absence — but all he caught was a vague impression, a name half-formed like a whisper against stone.
And then the man moved to the next patient, crouching beside Gideon, his shadow stretching across the hut like a silent sentinel.
Eliakim's instincts screamed questions. Who are you? Where are we? How did you find us?But his body had no strength left for demands.
For now, he just lay there in the quiet, the rain's rhythm on the roof counting the seconds since Vaeryn's grin.
The stranger worked in silence.And somewhere inside Eliakim, an unease began to grow — the sense that their survival might have cost them something they hadn't yet seen.