Calanthe watched the HUD displays on the knights’ faceplates stutter and jitter as they entered the moss-thickened air—targeting circles pulsing, system icons flashing in and out.

  In front of her, the town’s defenders formed up in a curve: five adventurers with chipped axes and swords, wearing worn chain mail, and a clutch of junior guards whose confidence had evaporated somewhere between the barracks and the square. All of them looked terrified; all of them refusing to back down despite her entreaties. It was simply written into their scripts.

  The standoff lasted less than a second. Kaelen’s voice cut through the hush, pitched perfectly to carry: “Advance. Full sweep. No prisoners.”

  The two remaining knights didn’t roar or whoop. They just surged forward with Kaelen, a blur of metal and pure intent. The first defender met Kaelen’s sword with a raised buckler. Callie saw it in slow-motion, the way the blade parted the shield from its straps and then continued cleanly through two of the boy’s fingers. The boy’s eyes went wide with the shock of it, but there was no time for a scream.

  The green mist magnified everything: every droplet of blood, every arc of movement, every stuttering breath. Callie felt the air thicken around her as she pressed into the line of defenders, counting wounds, cataloguing priorities, searching for anyone who still had a chance to walk away. She spotted a fallen female adventurer, cheek pressed to the moss-velvet stone, clutching at the stump of her forearm; Callie was at her side before the next pulse of violence rolled through.

  “Tourniquet,” she barked. “Briar, give me a strip!”

  Briar appeared instantly, hands full of moss bandages. “Here!”

  The woman’s skin was already pale, the flow of blood slowed by the green fog. Callie wrapped the forearm tight, pressed a wad of fungus to the wound, and channeled [Mend Flesh] just long enough to scab over the arteries and buy time.

  “You’re going to live,” she said, voice low and direct. “Get to the alley. Go.”

  The woman staggered away, trailing moss-spores with every limping step.

  Callie scanned the next quadrant of the square. Kaelen and his knights had carved a path straight through the defenders, every motion as crisp and exact as a training simulation. She saw one of the junior guards try for a grapple, only to be met with the blunt back of a gauntlet, then a boot, then the edge of a shield. The boy folded in half, vomited, and stayed down. The next in line lasted a little longer. He parried the first attack, dodged the second, then got caught by a lateral sweep that left a deep slash in his thigh. He dropped, but didn’t let go of the sword.

  Callie got to him before he bled out.

  “Pressure here,” she told him, forcing his hand over the cut. She smeared a scoop of green paste along the wound, watching as it bubbled and started to close. The man’s face was a rictus of pain, but he grunted in acknowledgement.

  ***

  The moss was doing its work even without her guidance. Every patch of green that touched a wound sent out tiny, hairlike roots, drawing in blood and weaving flesh together in a pattern that was almost beautiful. Callie kept one eye on the healing and the other on any advancing threats, the knights still clearly visible as dead zones in the sea of green.

  She felt the cold wind of a sword swing pass less than a foot from her head; instinct made her duck, and she rolled into the shadow of a toppled barrel. The knight was momentarily distracted by the blinding fog, and Callie exploited the gap to scuttle toward the next cluster of wounded.

  Callie worked as she surveyed the scene.

  Kaelen was still the center of the storm, sword moving in arcs that left no time for counters. But even he looked unsettled; the green mist had thickened, and the System warnings above his head now flickered with increasing urgency. [TARGET ACQUISITION FAILURE] alternated with [ENVIRONMENTAL ANOMALY: ADAPTIVE COUNTERMEASURE DETECTED].

  Callie heard the familiar voice of Lemmie, the baker’s daughter, shouting from the second floor of the town hall, “They’re splitting! Watch the north lane!”

  A sudden shriek split the air.

  Callie turned just in time to see Ember barrel into the knight who had been attempting to flank the defenders. The impact sent both warg and man tumbling into the moss, where they wrestled, teeth and steel flashing in the chaos. Ember’s jaws clamped onto the knight’s sword arm and shook, hard; the knight punched at Ember’s snout, but the blows seemed to do nothing. The knight’s armored gauntlet was slowly crushed between his jaws, forcing the knight’s grip to loosen on his sword. The knight tried to scramble away, but Zhao Tong was already there, spear poised and ready. The tip slipped under the knight’s flailing arm finding the soft tissue of his armpit; nearly severing his arm at the shoulder joint.

  Callie watched as the knight fell to the ground in shock, the healing moss creeping into his wound site, stanching the bleeding.

  Zhao pulled back. He looked at Callie and nodded once before turning to face Kaelen, who had noticed the loss of his wingman and was now fighting even harder.

  She watched a boy drag himself across the cobbles, leaving a streak of red behind, only to roll into a patch of moss and go still. She sprinted to his side, kneeling hard, already reaching for a pulse.

  “Still alive,” she breathed. “You’re going to make it.”

  His lips were blue, but his eyelids fluttered. Callie pressed [Soothe Pain] into his chest, then used [Bone Setting] to align the snapped tibia back into place. The joint clicked and the boy gasped, but the moss was already knitting the skin together, sealing the wound from outside in.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  She slapped his cheek, gently but firmly. “Stay awake,” she commanded. “If you sleep, you might not wake up.”

  The boy nodded, eyes wide and glassy. “Thank you, Healer,” he managed.

  She darted to the next fallen defender, a woman with a jagged cut across her midsection. The wound gaped, intestines threatening to spill out. Callie’s hands moved of their own accord: pack the bowels with moss, layer a band of green across the skin, whisper [Mend Flesh] until the light from her palms grew so bright it hurt to look at. The wound pulled closed, not perfect but better than it had any right to be.

  “Up,” she whispered. “Crawl if you can.”

  The woman groaned, then used her elbows to drag herself toward the nearest wall.

  The market square was a churn of color and noise: the wet sound of moss pulling together, the sharp clang of steel on stone, the muted shouts of the dying and the desperate. Through it all, Callie worked like a machine, moving from wound to wound, patching, setting, numbing, and healing, every movement exact and unhesitating. She never let herself think about what came next. She never let herself imagine a future beyond the next patient. If she did, she would freeze, and then people would die.

  ***

  By the time Callie looked up again, Kaelen was alone, his last knight presumably taken down by either Zhao or Ember.

  She could see two dark forms against the green mist sprinting towards the Paladin, presumably the two knights who had been despatched earlier to the mouth of the aqueduct, now returned empty handed.

  Kaelen and his last two knights regrouped at the fountain, backs to the rim, every movement still crisp and in perfect sync, still shining like dark holes in the green fog, the edges of their were fuzzed by the persistent spores.

  Callie’s gaze flickered to the edge of the plaza, where Zhao Tong and Ember moved in tandem, two predators locked on a single target. Zhao slid between the mossy walls, spear low and silent, while Ember prowled the opposite flank, eyes narrowed to feral slits, always within sprinting distance of Callie.

  Kaelen turned to face Callie and stalked across the square in her direction, his knights guarding his flanks. At about eight meters, he stopped and started swatting any hapless adventurer or over eager villager who crossed his path. To the untrained eye, there didn’t seem to be much to his sudden halt but there was a method to his violence which was immediately apparent to Callie—he was killing one and knocking another unconscious in an alternating pattern as if running a grand experiment

  Kaelen’s eyes never left the static of his HUD which was a mess; the status labels of his targets flipping from [CORRUPTED] to [CLEAN] the moment he stepped into Callie’s [Aura] field. Each time his sword met flesh, a new error appeared:

  [Warning: Reward Loop Inverted – Moral Cost = 1 XP/sec.]

  He was bleeding XP with every move, and Callie could see it in his face: the mounting frustration, the sense of a system that had betrayed its champion. She had absolutely no idea what was happening but caught Ember circling round to intercept the Paladin’s path.

  Kaelen’s eyes tracked the wolf, then snapped back to Callie. “You think this will save you?” he shouted, voice ringing off the stone. “Look at the amount of damage you’ve caused. You’re just delaying the inevitable.”

  But his actions betrayed his growing dissatisfaction: what exactly was the point of completing the mission and killing people if it caused an unrelenting drain on his XP counter. He was staring at his HUD, jaw clenched, sword tip dragging a line through the moss at his feet.

  “Your actions are generating disorder. XP deducted to maintain equilibrium. ” Kalen grunted as he read from his HUD. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re doing something to cleanse the people within ten meters of you. You fucking cu…” Kalen stopped himself before he uttered the final word, as if killing people was fine but calling women names had to be done in private.

  Callie almost laughed. The System was punishing Kaelen for his own efficiency; every death he delivered now chipped away at his XP, each act of violence carrying a penalty instead of a reward. He was trapped in a self-defeating grind, and the realization was plainly driving him mad.

  Kaelen closed within five meters of Callie and watched her healing the townsfolk who were laid out in rows in front of her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, shaking his head in exasperation.

  Callie knelt beside a guard captain with a shattered femur and blood bubbling from his mouth. She pressed her hand to his chest, felt the ragged edge of a punctured lung, and knew there was no saving him. She used [Soothe Pain] anyway, letting the spell dull the agony as much as possible.

  “Is that the way you’ve been leveling up in this world? You know that you’re only getting 10XP per heal, right? It’s in Belus’ brochure. Get a side quest for god’s sake.” Kaelen starting drawing lazy circles in the moss with the tip of his sword. “Alright, I’ve got time, keep torturing yourself that way.”

  ***

  The world contracted to that space: her knees pressed into the soft, pulsing carpet of moss, her hands cramping from effort and cold, her own breath so loud it drowned the sounds of violence outside. She’d lost track of time. All that mattered was the tangle of wounds in front of her, and the next life to fix before the System or the swords could erase it.

  She’d just finished closing the chest of a girl not more than ten, when Briar’s scream shattered her concentration.

  It was not the sound of someone surprised by pain. It was the raw, animal shriek of a person who knew, bone-deep, that her life was ending right now.

  Callie spun, time slowing to a crawl. Through the green, she saw Briar crouched behind a half-collapsed wall, one hand clutching a clay jar, the other pressed uselessly against her own side. Her vest and shirt were already black with blood.

  One of Kaelen’s two remaining knights was lifted high above Briar on the end of Zhao Tong’s spear. He was run through his neck; the spear point tearing across the flesh of his head and neck in the process but catching on his steel helmet. The knight’s sword hand was still raised for a second cut.

  Callie didn’t think. She closed the distance within seconds.

  Briar was on her back, blood pouring in a steady pulse from the ragged gash across her belly. The cut was so deep that loops of intestine bulged from the wound, glistening in the shifting light.

  Three seconds to stop the bleed, five to pack the viscera, ten more to stitch the fascia and hope the rest held.

  Callie pressed both hands to the wound and poured everything into [Mend Flesh] and [Soothe Pain]. Her vision blacked out at the edges, but she kept her hands steady. She shaped a mat of healing moss around the tissue, willing it to knit and fuse.

  Briar convulsed, foam on her lips, and Callie could see the HP counter slashing downward in jagged increments—13, 8, 3, then just a single red bar, flickering and almost gone.

  “Stay with me,” Callie said, voice shredded by grief and effort. “Don’t you dare leave me. Not now. Not now.”

  She screamed for help, but there was none to be had. The rest of the world was fighting its own battles.

  A dozen paces away, Ember was locked in combat with the other knight, jaws and claws leaving streaks of fur and gore across the moss. Zhao Tong was guarding her back against Kaelen who was striding towards them like a curious onlooker at car crash. Even Tanith, farther down the lane, was huddled over a cluster of wounded.

  Callie’s face was smeared with tears and blood and she wailed even as she poured every last drop of ambient green mana into her healing spells.

  “Hey, she’s only… “ Kaelen said, with something which sounded almost like concern.

  Callie screamed at him. “If this is a game, you’re losing the only part that matters.”

  Briar’s breathing slowed. Her HP counter hovered at three. It would end the moment Callie couldn’t carry on.