The healers could not explain why the remedies were failing.
They had tried the standard protocols: restorative aetheric infusions, stabilizing bone-knit poultices, the herbal suppressants favored by the military surgeons for treating long-term trauma. None of it held. The gnoll's body simply did not metabolize the treatments. It absorbed them and discarded them, the way a saturated field discards rain.
The head physician, a nervous elf with ink-stained fingers, met Sera Myrvalis in the corridor outside the ward.
"His organs are shutting down in sequence," the physician said quietly. He had been in the Imperium's medical service for sixty years. He had seen things. His voice was still steady, but only just. "It is not disease. It is not injury. The tissue is simply... choosing to stop. I have not seen this before."
Sera looked at the closed door.
