The prison walls had always seemed unshakable, like black stone carved into permanence. Tonight, they burned. Screams tore through the lower city as firelight bled across the narrow streets, painting the prison’s iron gates in shades of orange. Daren Veynar stood where the gate had been broken, leather armor scorched, blood smeared along his jaw. He had survived the first wave, but the attackers moved like smoke—striking fast, vanishing into alleys before the guard could rally.

One figure darted past him into the maze of the lower district. Without hesitation, Daren followed. His boots slapped the wet cobblestones, his breath ragged but measured, the sound of pursuit swallowed by the city’s endless dark. The alley narrowed, lanterns failing to reach its depths. He caught the flash of steel too late.

A blade drove into his chest.

The air fled his lungs in a single, choked gasp. The pain was immediate, merciless, blooming out from the wound like fire. His knees buckled. The world tilted sideways as he hit the ground, stone biting into his shoulder. Somewhere above him, footsteps echoed—retreating, scattering—but one remained.

Daren blinked against the blur of his vision. A shape loomed over him. A woman, clad in black leather sculpted with strange, curling patterns that caught faint light. Her hood shadowed her features, but her eyes burned with something other than cruelty. Not triumph. Not pity either—something heavier, deliberate.

She knelt.

Her hand hovered above his wound. The other rose to her lips. Then she exhaled.

A stream of purple smoke curled from her mouth, coiling like a living thing. It drifted down, wrapping around his chest, seeping into the open wound. The sensation was alien—not warmth, not cold, but something deeper, pressing against his very bones. His vision flickered, edges swallowed in violet haze.

Daren wanted to push her away, to demand why, but his limbs no longer obeyed. He lay still, forced to endure the strange invasion. His breath rattled, then hitched as something inside his chest pulled tight—like invisible threads sewing together what had been torn. The agony sharpened, then dulled, then shifted into a weightless numbness.

Her expression, lit by the faint glow of the smoke, was serious, intent. This was no act of mercy done lightly. Her lips parted again, another slow exhale, another wisp of smoke slipping into him. The alley seemed to vanish into darkness, leaving only her figure above him and the choking violet haze between them.

Daren’s eyes locked on hers. Grey met the shimmer of something strange, something otherworldly. For the first time in years, fear clawed at him—not of death, but of what she was pulling him back into. The prison had taught him to expect cruelty, not salvation. Yet here she was, breathing life where none should remain.

His chest convulsed. He coughed, a harsh, raw sound, and with it came a rush of air as if his lungs remembered what they were meant to do. Blood spattered his lips, but he was breathing again. He was alive.

The woman did not smile. She did not speak. She only steadied him with one gloved hand against his shoulder, her gaze fixed as though measuring how much life she dared give him. The purple smoke faded, dissolving into the damp night.

Around them, the city groaned with chaos—the distant clash of steel, the crackle of burning timber—but here, in this narrow strip of shadow, there was only her and him, healer and dying man. The world’s fury seemed muted, the colors drawn down to blacks, greys, and the faint violet glow lingering on his lips.

Daren lay still, breathing shallow, unable to understand why an enemy would choose him. He tried to speak, but no sound came. His body trembled with the effort. The woman leaned closer, her presence filling his vision. For a moment, her eyes softened, though her expression never broke from its grim mask.