# Chapter 188: The Healer's Scorn
The cold from the dart was a stubborn thing, a creeping frost that Sister Judit's salve only slowly coaxed from his shoulder. Soren sat on the edge of a cot in the cramped, candle-lit infirmary, the air thick with the scent of antiseptic herbs and old stone. He watched her work, her movements precise but lacking their usual gentle reassurance. "Jex's words are spreading," he said, his voice low. "People are wondering if the League is just using me." Judit paused, her hands still. She didn't look at him, but at the flickering flame of a nearby candle. "They should wonder," she whispered, her voice thin and strained. "But not for the reasons they think. The League wants the Synod's gold. That is a worldly concern. A predictable sin." She finally turned to him, her eyes wide with a terror he had never seen before. "You, Soren… you offer something far more dangerous. You offer them false hope. You preach a freedom from the Cost, a release from the holy burden that is our penance and our purpose. That is heresy. And heresy… the Synod will burn from the world."
The words hung in the air, heavier than the dust motes dancing in the single shaft of light from a high, barred window. Soren felt the salve on his shoulder turn to ice. He had expected concern, perhaps a lecture on the dangers of the Sable League, but not this. Not this raw, theological fear. He opened his mouth to argue, to speak of the Bloom-Wastes and the possibility he'd seen, the faint echo of a life without the constant drain of power. But the look in her eyes stopped him. It was the gaze of a true believer who had just glimpsed the abyss.
"Heresy, Judit?" he finally managed, his own voice a rough counterpoint to her whisper. "Is it heresy to want to live? To not have every moment of joy measured against the seconds it shaves from my life?" He gestured with his free hand, a sharp, angry motion. "My Cinder-Tattoos aren't a mark of holiness. They're a tally. A countdown. You see it every day on the fighters who come in here. You see the light fade from their skin, the life from their eyes. Is that a holy purpose?"
Judit flinched as if he'd struck her. She turned away, her focus returning to the small ceramic pot of salve. Her knuckles were white where she gripped its rim. "You see only the pain, Soren. You see only the cost. You have always seen only the cost." Her voice was still strained, but now it was threaded with a familiar sorrow, the sadness she always carried for the broken bodies that passed through her hidden sanctuary. "You do not see the balance. The Bloom was a sin of pride, a world that tried to grasp power without consequence. The Cost is the world's correction. It is the penance we pay for the gift of touching the divine. It is what keeps us from becoming monsters again."
He stood up, the cot groaning behind him. The movement sent a fresh wave of cold through his arm, a phantom of the poison. "Monsters? Like the Withering King? Like the Inquisitors who hunt us in the streets? I've seen monsters, Judit. They wear robes and armor. They don't need a Gift to be cruel." He began to pace the narrow space between the cots, his boots scuffing on the grimy flagstones. The infirmary was a secret place, tucked away in the forgotten underbelly of the Ladder complex. It was a place of refuge, but now it felt like a cage. "The Cost doesn't make us holy. It makes us weak. It makes us controllable. The Synod uses it like a leash, and they've convinced people like you that it's a holy tether."
"That is not true!" The words burst from her, a rare show of passion that made him stop. She faced him fully, her face pale in the candlelight, the simple linen wimple of her acolyte's habit framing her features. "The leash is the Concord of Cinders! The leash is the Ladder! The Cost is the fire that forges the soul! Without it, we would be no different from the Ashen Remnant, wielding power without thought, without consequence. The Synod guides us, teaches us to bear the burden so that our power serves a purpose!"
"And what purpose is that?" Soren shot back, his voice rising. "To fight in their arenas for their amusement? To settle their trade disputes? To die in their wars so the Crownlands can have more grain and the League can have more steel? My purpose is my family. My purpose is to see my mother and brother free. The Synod would see them dead in a labor pit to teach me a lesson about 'holy burden'."
A groan from a nearby cot cut through their argument. A young fighter, no older than Finn, was shifting restlessly, his face beaded with sweat. His Cinder-Tattoos, a web of thorny vines across his chest, glowed with a sickly, pulsating yellow light. Judit immediately went to him, her professional demeanor reasserting itself like a shield. She placed a cool cloth on his forehead, her movements once again precise and gentle. Soren watched, his anger cooling into a hard knot of frustration. This was her world. The immediate, the tangible. The suffering she could soothe, if not cure.
"He pushed too hard in his Trial," she said softly, not looking at Soren. "He wanted to impress a patron. He thought a grand display would earn his family a better stipend." She sighed, a sound of profound weariness. "He won. But the Cost… it has taken root in his lungs. He will breathe ash for the rest of his days, however many that may be."
Soren walked to the cot, looking down at the boy. He could see the faint grey dust on the young man's lips, a grim signature of his power's price. "And that's holy? That's a necessary sacrifice?"
"It is the consequence of a choice," Judit corrected, her voice quiet but firm. "A choice he made. We are not slaves to the Cost, Soren. We are partners in a covenant. We are given power, and we give back a piece of ourselves to keep the world in balance. You… you want to break the covenant. You want to take the power and give back nothing. That is the ultimate sin. That is the pride of the Bloom reborn."
Her words struck him with a force that Jex's poisoned dart could not match. He had never seen it that way. He had seen the Cost as a parasitic bond, a flaw in their very being. But she saw it as a sacred contract. It was a chasm of understanding between them, one he suddenly realized could never be bridged. He was not just fighting a system of laws and power structures; he was fighting a god.
"I don't want to give back nothing," he said, his voice barely audible. "I want to give back the pain. The fear. The constant counting of days. I want to live, Judit. Truly live. Isn't that what the divine would want for its creations?"
She looked from the boy to him, her eyes filled with a deep and pitying sadness. "The divine wants us to be worthy of the gifts we are given. And worth is earned through sacrifice." She straightened up, her duty to the sleeping fighter done. She turned her full attention back to Soren, and the fear was back in her eyes, sharper now, more focused. "You must stop, Soren. For your own sake. For the sake of everyone who listens to you. The Inquisitors are not the only ones who will come for you. The faithful will see you as a demon, a tempter leading them astray. They will pray for your destruction, and their prayers… the Synod listens."
He felt a profound sense of isolation wash over him, colder and deeper than the poison. He had thought he was building an army of the discontent, but he hadn't realized he was also creating an army of zealots who would see him as their ultimate enemy. His fight was not just against Valerius and his knights, but against millions of souls like Judit, who would rather die in holy agony than live in what they considered sinful grace.
"I can't stop," he said, the words feeling both like a vow and a death sentence. "Even if I wanted to, I can't. My family's contract is up at the end of the season."
"Then let them go," she whispered, stepping closer, her hand reaching out but not quite touching his arm. "Some debts cannot be paid. Some prices are too high. Save your own soul. Flee into the wastes. Hide. Live what life you have left in peace."
"And what of them?" he countered, gesturing vaguely toward the arena above, the city beyond. "What of the boy on the cot? What of Finn? What of all the others who are chained by the same covenant? Should I just save myself and leave them to their 'holy burden'?"
Her hand dropped to her side. The pity in her eyes hardened into something else. Resignation. "You cannot save them, Soren. You can only damn them with your hope. You offer them a mirage in the desert, and when they chase it, they will only die of thirst faster." She took a step back, putting distance between them, a physical manifestation of the chasm in their beliefs. "You came here for me to heal your body. But your spirit is sick with a pride I cannot cure. I have done what I can for the poison. The rest… you must face alone."
She turned and walked to a small, locked cabinet in the corner, her back to him. The dismissal was absolute. Soren stood there for a long moment, the cold in his shoulder a dull ache compared to the one blooming in his chest. He looked at the sleeping fighter, at the rows of empty cots waiting for their next occupants, at the flickering candles that seemed to be burning down with unnatural speed. This place, which had always been a refuge, now felt like a tomb. A tomb for the very hope he was trying to build.
He turned and walked toward the door, his footsteps heavy in the silence. He reached the heavy, iron-strapped wood and paused, his hand on the latch. He didn't look back.
"You offer them false hope, Soren," Judit's voice followed him, a final, mournful whisper from the shadows. "There is no escaping the price of power."