Seeing the wind at her back, Lucimia fanned the flames.

She’d laid down reason like a cool jade tile; time to place an ember of feeling on the board.

“Besides that, there’s one more thing,” she said, lifting a finger like a firefly.

Anjelo surfaced from thought like from a deep pond, and he looked at Lucimia with a question in his eyes.

“I’m guessing you, Shebelle, and that granny share a roof and a warm stove, so you’re closer than most, right?”

“So if Dory dies, Shebelle will be heartbroken—a cup dropped on stone—and you don’t want to see that, do you? Worse, if she learns you stopped me from treating him, she might carry a thorn against you,” Lucimia added, hands open like empty clouds.

“That kind of thing warps a child’s growth like a sapling bent by wind.”

“Aren’t you a child too?” Desty quipped, a pebble skipping across a stream.

Lucimia rolled her eyes, a pale moon sliding behind clouds.

Anjelo listened in silence, grinding his thoughts like ink in a quiet room.

He agreed: with Healing Magic, they could confirm the illness type, and a clear path would show like a compass through mist.

If it could be cured, the path would be set and Shebelle’s smile would light two lanterns with one spark.

If it couldn’t, she’d grieve like rain on eaves, yet the riverbed of their course would still be carved.

Either way, the wind would fill their sails.

Having settled that, Anjelo finally nodded, a pine bowing under snow.

“Alright, I’ll take you there,” he said, like a bamboo door creaking open.

Lucimia let out a breath, steam vanishing in winter air.

She felt worn like hauling a cart uphill; persuading this man was hard, and without Shebelle’s intel she’d have walked.

As for that “confirming the path” she’d sold him on, the thought spread like ink.

Sadly, Devouring couldn’t tell ordinary disease from foul pollution—same night, different stars.

If it came to it, she could have Desty test in secret, a knife against the grain of Anjelo’s creed.

Longing caught in her chest—if only she truly knew Healing Magic, a well with no rope.

No—wait. Maybe Devouring could confirm it if she turned the key another notch.

Anjelo stood, shoved aside a wooden cabinet, and revealed a trapdoor beneath, like the moon unveiling a hidden well.

So Dory was isolated below, a seed buried in earth?

Right—Anjelo had been in contact with Dory; had rain slipped through his thatch, or was his shield tight?

Anjelo lifted the trapdoor and led them down, like ants entering a root hollow.

They trod uneven stone stairs and reached an underground space, the air cool as a cave’s breath.

There were desks and instruments, but no Dory—empty reed beds after frost.

Across the room waited another door, a lantern behind a paper screen.

Anjelo changed clothes, strapped on a leather mask, and handed Lucimia and Desty one, armor before a storm.

So this was his protection, a paper umbrella in rain?

Lucimia thanked him and said she had her own barrier; she layered another shield over him with her Devouring Authority, a silk veil over iron.

With that, the three stepped into the second room, crossing a second gate in mist.

Inside, Dory still wasn’t there; another door stood ahead, corridors like nested boxes.

What? The isolation was this tight, fortress walls within walls?

Huge vats lined the room; Anjelo ladled white powder with a wooden bowl and splashed it over himself, snow sifted over armor.

It looked like the same powder the granny had tossed over Shebelle—chalk dust against monsoon—could it really block disease?

Noting Lucimia’s doubt, Anjelo said, “It’s something called wu powder. It can block bacteria and viruses to a degree,” a thin ash wall against sparks.

“For real?” Lucimia frowned at mere dust, sand trying to dam a river.

“Of course it’s real; I tested it,” Anjelo added. “I discovered it, ground from several herbs,” mortar and pestle rumbling like thunder in a bowl.

“I see…” Lucimia nodded, a reed bending but not breaking.

After they prepared, Anjelo pushed open the final wooden door, a gate groaning like an old pine.

Stepping in, Lucimia met a rank stench, swamp gas under summer heat; she frowned and covered her mouth and nose.

“Sorry. Since Dory can’t leave, his bodily needs are in here… and sometimes he vomits,” he said, stagnant water sealed in a jar.

“…Alright, I get it.” Lucimia snuffed her sense of smell with her Devouring Authority, a candle pinched out in her mind.

She stepped in and found a small boy on a plank bed, coughing and spitting foamy blood, red bubbles like crushed berries on snow.

His mind looked fogged; he half-opened his eyes, mute, blue-lipped from laboring breath, a fish gasping on a riverbank.

By the signs, his pneumonic plague had just slipped into late stage, a sun sinking behind black clouds.

It was grave indeed, a bell tolling in a winter temple.

“Begin,” Anjelo said, voice steady as a drawn bow.

Lucimia nodded and stepped forward, a crane onto thin ice.

Dory had short brown hair; oh—and Shebelle and the granny had brown hair too, tea with a thread of sun.

She raised her hand over the frail boy smeared with his own blood, a cloud over a wounded fawn.

Worry thrummed—how could she use her Devouring Authority to tell the disease apart, a path hunted in fog?

Lucimia thought, mind turning like a waterwheel.

Beside her, Anjelo watched the delay, and a shadow crossed his lantern: if she couldn’t heal him, did that tie the illness to the Dark Deity?

Soon, Lucimia tried the first step; inwardly she whispered, Devour the plague bacilli on Dory, a blade sliding into water.

Her Devouring, masked by the Disguise Power, cast down green light, willow fireflies drifting.

Lucimia reached out to sense whether the Fuzzy Orb had caught any pathogens, listening for ripples in a bowl.

Soon she felt the Fuzzy Orb gulp something from the boy and confirmed it as a virus, a tiny eel in the net.

So the virus in him was ordinary, rainwater in the well, not poison?

With that thought, Lucimia tried again: Devour the pulmonary edema in Dory, draining floodwater from a field.

The effect was clear; pain ebbed from his face, and his breathing evened, a storm calming over a lake.

It worked, a lamp catching flame.

So Lucimia swept up all other virus-led damage and complications with one pass, harvesting weeds from a garden.

The techniques drew only first-layer energy, light as lifting a feather on a breeze.

After several passes, the boy returned to normal; color flushed back and his awareness cleared, peach blossoms opening after rain.

“I… I feel so much better…” he murmured, a sparrow after storm.

Aside from the tired tone, he was fine, a bow unstrung yet intact.

To prevent reinfection, Lucimia devoured the viruses still drifting into him, then told Anjelo to take him out fast, shutters closed against wind.

Seeing the boy sit up by himself, Anjelo stared at Lucimia, eyes bright like lanterns lit.

He could confirm the illness was an ordinary virus, mud not tar on the road.

The four left the virus room quickly; door shut, Anjelo splashed wu powder on himself and the boy, and over door and walls, lime flung on a hearth.

“Th-thank you, big sis…” Dory whispered, clutching Anjelo’s hand like a kitten clinging to a sleeve.

He’d watched Lucimia heal him with Healing Magic; the savior’s name was carved clear, knife on bamboo.

“Don’t mention it,” Lucimia said, nodding calmly, a clear lake accepting a tossed petal.

Since the boy was restored, it was time to seek Shebelle for intel on the Time Ability User, turning the page as the sun tipped west.

Anjelo thanked Lucimia as well, a bamboo bow in wind.

The boy wanted to rush to his sister and grandma, but Anjelo reined him in, keeping him here a while to be sure, a colt held before the bridge.