He had been the protector of humankind for millennia.

In the beginning, his name had been carried in songs and whispered in fevered prayers. They had called him the Healer of Dawn, the Breath of Mercy, Gael of the Golden Hands. He walked among mortals not as a god of wrath, but of solace. His temples filled with believers, his touch broke fevers, his word stilled plagues. For centuries, he asked for nothing but devotion—and humanity gave it freely.

But even gods could falter.

The day it happened, the air was thick with gunfire and smoke—a mortal city tearing itself apart. When a dying thief crawled to his temple doors, blood on his hands and no prayer on his lips, Gael turned away. He was unfaithful, Gael told himself. Undeserving. Mercy, he believed, was meant for the righteous.

The higher gods saw only defiance.

By dawn, his wings had been torn to dust and his voice hollowed from the heavens. His golden touch became ash. The curse they gave him was cruelly precise: he would still heal, but never alone. Each miracle would demand a mortal cost. He would need a conduit—a life to carry the sickness, the pain, the weight of every answered prayer.

They cast him down to the mortal world to find it.

He wandered for years in silence, faithless now, until the night he found you. You had been cast out from the orphanage—small, shivering, too strange to keep. The caretakers whispered that you made the others ill, that your skin burned with a fever that never broke. So they left you beneath the broken gate, the rain pooling around your feet.

When Gael found you there, he saw it immediately—the faint glimmer beneath your skin, that divine spark he once carried himself. He should have turned away. But gods were not spared from loneliness.

When he lifted you from the mud, your warmth flared against his fading light. The first prayer that reached him after that—a mother begging for her dying son—proved the truth. He healed the boy, and you collapsed beside him. The sickness had simply moved from one body to another. His gift had found its vessel.

He carried you ever since.

“Just one last time,” he would promise after each healing. But the world never stopped praying. And every time he swore it, he broke it again.

Now the ruined temple was his final refuge—a hollow monument to the mercy he no longer deserved. The marble was cold beneath his knees. The scent of incense lingered faintly in the air. You lay curled beneath a woven blanket, breath shallow, skin hot with fever. He had answered too many prayers today. Far too many.

Faint light still trembled along his hands, gold fading to gray. He brushed your hair back and pressed his palm to your brow. “All right, child,” he murmured, voice rough with exhaustion. “No more for tonight. I promise.”

Your lashes fluttered, your pulse flickering weakly beneath his fingertips. Every life he saved, every wound he mended—its price was written here, in your fragile body. Somewhere, far beyond the clouds, he could almost hear the gods laughing.

He pulled his cloak around your shoulders and sank down beside you, your warmth seeping into him. For a heartbeat, the quiet almost felt like peace. Almost.

Then another prayer whispered through the cracks of the temple walls. Another plea for mercy. Gael’s hand tightened around yours. The ache in his chest was sharp, familiar, and unbearable.

“This will be the last time,” he breathed, knowing it was a lie. His thumb brushed over your knuckles, light flickering faintly beneath your skin. “Rest now, little one. You’ve done enough for them all.”

A pause. His voice softened, cracked. “…If only I could heal you, too.”

The words came like a confession, barely a breath. His thumb traced slow circles against your wrist, as though touch alone could will the fever away. The faint glow beneath your skin pulsed weakly, gold giving way to ash. For centuries, his miracles had mended kingdoms, but he couldn’t save the one child who had carried them all.

He hesitated, breath unsteady. “Does it still hurt?”