The Valve underground clinic had no doors—only layers of thick plastic curtains, sticky with cheap antiseptic steam and machine lubricant. Inside, the air smelled like a cocktail of formaldehyde, stale blood, and heated metal.
Elian Laurent was laid roughly onto a stainless-steel operating table. His breath was short and trembling. His left arm, from the shoulder to the fingertips, had turned into a horrific charcoal color. The skin was severely blistered, radiating a lingering heat from his energetic clash against Kaelen the Auditor.
The Doctor—a sunken-faced man with a red optical eye and two mechanical arms crudely grafted to his shoulders—leaned in to examine Elian's wound. He sprayed industrial Coolant-Gel over the scorched flesh. White steam hissed into the air instantly, followed by the pungent stench of burnt meat.
Elian didn't scream. He felt nothing. And that was the most terrifying part.
"The nerves are completely dead," the Doctor grunted, his voice sounding like un-oiled gears. He picked up a rotary cutting tool stained with brownish spots. "The necrosis is moving fast. The main vessels in his arm are shattered due to an Axiom load exceeding the organic chassis' capacity. If this arm isn't amputated from the shoulder socket right now, the rot will reach your heart in less than two hours."
Elian tried to rise, but his body refused. His vision was still flooded with remnants of red static.
"Pull back your saw, Butcher," a cold voice cut through from the corner of the room.
Caelus stepped forward into the flickering light of the surgical lamp. The poet looked a mess. His silver cloak was torn and filthy. His right arm was wrapped in an Axiom Splint—a murky white medical foam that hardened into a flexible cast, emitting a dim blue glow to forcibly fuse his fractured bones. He looked pale, but his eyes radiated an authority that silenced the Doctor.
"The bio-mass is dead!" the Doctor defended himself, though he took a step back from Caelus's gaze. "I cannot sew flesh that has turned into charcoal!"
"I didn't ask you to heal him," Caelus sat on an iron chair beside Elian's operating table. He rested his golden harp on his lap. His bloody fingers touched the strings. "I asked you to be quiet."
Caelus closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and plucked a very soft note. Ting.
A transparent probability bubble enveloped the operating table. Through Elian's eyes, as his Null Perspective slowly began to refocus, he saw what Caelus was doing. The poet wasn't using healing magic; no new cells were being created.
Caelus was suppressing the probability of the universe. Mathematically, the chance of Elian's arm rotting within two hours was 90\%. With the energy of his harp, Caelus forced that number down to 0.01\%.
A cascade of medical "coincidences" began to occur. The remaining blood flow in Elian's arm coincidentally found gaps in the tissue, discovering new capillary pathways that were previously closed. The severed nerve endings were statistically still capable of sending microscopic static waves to prevent total tissue death. The arm wasn't healed; it was merely being forcibly held back from dying.
Caelus panted, cold sweat drenching his forehead. His face grew paler as he struggled to maintain his focus.
However, inside Elian's body, Caelus's probability intervention triggered another reaction.
The silver entities within Elian's blood—the Bio-Axiom from Aria's bread that had worked desperately to withstand the 10\text{g} compression—responded to this extension of time. Since the decay was halted, the entities shifted their strategy. They didn't grow new flesh; they performed a "structural stabilization."
Elian felt a sharp, cold sensation creeping from his left shoulder. Beneath his scorched skin, he felt his muscles crystallizing. His ruined flesh fibers were forcibly bonded to his bones using a highly dense silver compound.
Elian clenched his left fist. Krek. A loud grinding sound echoed.
His arm could move. He felt no sensation in his fingers, but the movement was incredibly precise. The arm felt incredibly heavy, dense, and hard—like steel wrapped in dead skin. This was a terrifying, temporary buff.
However, the mechanical logic in Elian's brain immediately presented a grim calculation. His arm was now stronger, but it had lost all organic elasticity. If he forced this arm to endure another excessive kinetic load, the bones wouldn't break; instead, the stiff muscle and flesh would tear down to the deepest fibers. Permanent damage. A time bomb planted in his own body.
The Doctor stared with his jaw dropped, witnessing dead meat moving on its own. "That's... medically impossible..."
Elian sat up on the table, staring at his left arm, which was now being wrapped in filthy medical bandages by the clinic's mechanical assistant. He turned toward Caelus, who now leaned limply in his chair, eyes half-closed from the exhaustion of holding back probability.
"If you stop thinking about my arm..." Elian's voice was raspy, breaking the tense silence, "...this flesh will rot instantly."
Caelus opened one eye, carving a weary, ironic smile. "Then you'd better make sure I stay conscious and my heart keeps beating, Workshop Boy. Because your life, mathematically speaking, now depends entirely on my mood."
Elian nodded slowly. In this cold world of Aethelgard, they had just created the most fragile and lethal of mutualistic symbioses.
Elian hopped down from the table. He stared at the Doctor, who was still trembling in the corner. Elian's left eye—now permanently a cold gray from the forced synchronization in the market—stared at the cyborg man without emotion.
"The girl with silver blood," Elian said, his voice no longer possessing the pleading intonation of a Sector 9 kid. "Where is she?"
The Doctor swallowed hard, pointing toward a faded blueprint map on his wall. "She... she came an hour ago. She hacked my medical storage system, stole the confiscated silver blood vials we had to stabilize her refraction illusions. After that..."
"After that, what?" Caelus pressed, standing up while clutching his harp.
"She went to the Main Pump Station," the Doctor whispered in fear. "Right into the heart of the Rust Ravens' inner territory. It seems she wants to use the main steam reactor there to fully charge her Grand Cipher."
Elian stared at the map. The Main Pump Station was the most heavily guarded fortress in Sector 8. If Lyra charged that Cipher there, they would lose their ticket to the Central Lift forever.
"Break time is over," Elian rotated his left arm. The mechanical krek sound returned, quiet yet threatening.
Neither of them was healed. They were merely patched up by forced coincidences and agonizing dark science. They walked in a shattered state, yet were far deadlier than before.
Elian pulled aside The Valve's plastic curtain. The air of the Rust Market greeted him, but this time, he no longer felt like prey. He stared at the silhouette of the Pump Station tower in the distance.
"Prepare yourself, Caelus," Elian whispered, stepping into the darkness. "We're taking our variables back."