Night in Dayakan did not sleep.
It thinned.
Voices dropped, footsteps softened, fires lowered, but the camp never truly surrendered itself to rest. Someone always moved beyond the tents. Someone always watched the tree line. Someone always listened for the wrong sound returning from the dark.
Vincent sat beneath the lean-to with his back against a support post and the gauntlet resting on his raised knee.
The gem pulsed faintly.
Each pulse reminded him of the same things: the dungeon below Aldebaran, the larger corrupted beast in the narrow tunnel, the bowl of captured taint cracking under his hand, the ugly surge of stabilization that followed, and the hunger beneath it that did not belong to him.
Useful.
Dangerous.
Temporary.
He was still awake because sleep would not have improved the arithmetic.
Across from him, the Shaman stripped dry leaves from a stem and sorted them into three small piles with maddening patience.
Julia arrived soundlessly from the women's fire and stopped just outside the lean-to.
Not because she wanted permission.
Because camp rules had already made space itself part of the conversation.
"Sit," Vincent said.
Julia lowered herself onto the packed earth beside the post rather than directly beside him. Close enough to speak quietly. Far enough not to challenge Dayakan's invisible lines more than necessary.
The bruise on her wrist had darkened. One shoulder sat a little tighter than the other from the contest with Serya.
Vincent noticed both.
Julia noticed him noticing and said flatly, "Don't start."
"I wasn't speaking."
"You were evaluating."
"Yes."
"That counts."
Fair.
The Shaman said, without looking up, "Good. Both of you are still sharp enough to be inconvenient."
Julia did not seem flattered by that.
Vincent looked toward the center fire where Taliah still stood speaking with Ragan and two older hunters. No one in camp had fully let go of tomorrow. You could see it in the way tasks were done—faster, cleaner, with glances that returned too often to the Shaman's lean-to.
A tribe waiting for a decision did not relax. It prepared around the waiting.
Julia lowered her voice.
"You cannot agree to this."
Vincent looked at her.
She held his gaze this time. No deference in it now. No title between them. Only urgency stripped of ceremony.
"They don't know what it will do to him," she said. "Or to you."
"No."
"And that should be the end of it."
"It won't be."
Julia's jaw tightened. "That isn't an answer."
"It is the only useful one."
That angered her more because it was shaped like calm.
Good.
Better anger than helplessness.
Julia leaned slightly closer, keeping her voice low enough that only he and the old man sorting herbs would hear it.
"They have a sick child."
Vincent said nothing.
She continued, more sharply now, "Not a corrupted boar. Not dead residue in a bowl. A child. And you're already thinking in terms of rules and method as if that makes this clean."
There it was.
Not fear of the gauntlet alone.
Fear that he would become too willing to use it where the line was still uncertain.
Reasonable.
Accurate.
The Shaman set one herb pile aside and finally looked up.
"She is right."
Vincent looked at him. "I know."
Julia stared at him for half a second, thrown off not by the agreement but by how quickly it came.
"Then refuse."
Vincent let the silence sit just long enough to force the harder truth into the space between them.
"If I refuse," he said, "Taliah loses patience, Serya gains ground, and this camp decides I am a dangerous mouth with no use attached to it."
Julia's eyes flicked once toward the tree line.
Toward the world outside the fires.
Yes, that too.
Vincent continued.
"If I agree without structure, I become exactly what the Shaman is warning against."
The old man gave the smallest nod.
Good.
He understood he was being used as a witness in his own argument.
Julia folded her arms.
"So your plan is to stand between bad and worse and call that safety?"
"My plan is to make worse expensive."
That quieted her.
Not persuaded. Thinking.
Good enough for now.
The Shaman rose with the slow economy of age and set the sorted herbs into separate cloth packets.
"Then say them aloud," he said.
Vincent's gaze sharpened slightly. "What?"
"Your rules."
Julia turned toward him too.
Outside the lean-to, a shape passed near the edge of firelight and slowed—one of the older women carrying water, moving more quietly than the bucket required. Listening.
Of course.
By dawn the camp would know every word anyway.
Better to speak plainly and let the terms travel intact.
Vincent looked down at the gauntlet.
At the dark scales sealed to his arm.
At the faint blue-black lines that had spread farther than skin should willingly accept.
Then he spoke.
"First," he said, "I do not touch living taint unless the patient is already failing under Dayakan's current treatment."
The Shaman nodded at once.
Julia exhaled, some tension leaving her shoulders.
Vincent continued.
"Second: you tell me everything you know about the wound before I lay a hand on it. How long it has been there. What cut it. What was tried. What changed."
The Shaman nodded again.
He approved of information. Sensible man.
"Third," Vincent said, "I do not do it alone."
Julia looked at him sharply.
He didn't need to explain which part of the rule had been written for her.
The Shaman asked, "Meaning?"
"Meaning the patient is not held down by panic and guesswork while everyone stares at me afterward as if fear were a treatment. I want you there. Taliah there. Julia there."
Julia blinked.
The Shaman said, "Why the maid?"
Vincent answered immediately. "Because if the gauntlet reacts badly, I want one person in this camp whose first instinct is not to protect Dayakan from me."
Silence.
Julia looked away first.
Good.
Let her feel the weight of the trust without being forced to answer it aloud in front of the old man.
The Shaman's expression did not soften. But his eyes sharpened in a way Vincent was beginning to recognize as approval he did not like offering.
"Continue."
"Fourth," Vincent said, "the patient is told what we are doing."
Julia nodded immediately.
The Shaman was slower.
Interesting.
Taliah would dislike that one, then.
Good.
"Children are told less when fear is the sharper blade," the old man said.
Vincent met his gaze.
"Then you choose whether you want honesty or compliance. I won't take the first touch while someone lies to the body I'm touching."
That sat heavily.
Because it was not sentiment.
It was method again.
The body mattered. Fear mattered. Consent mattered not morally alone, but practically. A panicked patient ruined clean observation.
The Shaman accepted that without liking the shape of it.
"Fifth?"
Vincent looked at the gauntlet.
"Fifth: if the hand starts taking more than taint, you stop me."
Julia went still.
The Shaman did too.
There.
That was the true rule beneath all the others.
Not whether the patient survived.
Whether Vincent remained Vincent while trying to help them.
The old man asked quietly, "And how will we know?"
Vincent gave the only honest answer.
"You won't. Not at first."
Julia's fingers curled against her sleeves.
The camp beyond the lean-to felt farther away now, though it had only grown more attentive. People moved. Fires cracked softly. Somewhere a child was hushed in a tent. But around the three of them there was only the gauntlet, the future, and the shape of a risk no one could fully price.
Vincent added, "That's why you watch for what changes."
The Shaman looked at him for a long time.
Then said, "Good."
Julia turned toward him. "That's all?"
"No," Vincent said. "It's only enough to begin."
That was when Taliah arrived.
Of course she had heard enough to choose her entrance well.
She stopped at the edge of the lean-to and looked from Vincent to the Shaman to Julia, reading the afterimage of the conversation in posture alone.
"Begin what?" she asked.
Vincent answered, "The part where I make this test less stupid."
Taliah's mouth did not quite smile.
"Ambitious."
She stepped in without asking and crouched opposite him, balanced, alert, and all practicality.
"The Shaman says you're setting terms."
"Yes."
"And?"
Vincent repeated them.
Not because she had not heard pieces already.
Because leaders respected structure more when it was delivered directly to their face.
He gave all five rules in the same order.
Taliah interrupted only once.
"At the fourth," she said. "You want the child told."
"Yes."
"This is not a noble hall," she said. "We do not ask frightened children to negotiate their own pain."
"I'm not asking him to negotiate it," Vincent said. "I'm saying no one lies about what hand is touching him."
That met her cleanly enough to force a real pause.
Good.
She didn't dislike truth. She disliked wasted softness. Different problem.
When he finished, Taliah remained still for one beat, then another, measuring the terms not as ethics but as logistics.
At last she said, "You assume I need you enough to accept conditions."
Vincent replied, "You assume you don't."
The Shaman closed his eyes briefly, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in resignation that younger people insisted on making correct conversations unpleasant.
Taliah's gaze sharpened.
Then, unexpectedly, she nodded once.
"Most of that stands."
Julia exhaled slowly through her nose.
"Most?" Vincent asked.
Taliah did not blink. "I decide who stands close to the patient."
"That one doesn't bend."
Her eyes narrowed. "You think the maid is more necessary than my hunters?"
"No," Vincent said. "I think your hunters are more likely to put a spear through me at the wrong moment."
That almost made her laugh.
Almost.
The Shaman said, "He is not wrong."
Taliah's jaw shifted very slightly.
Then: "Fine. The maid stays."
Julia looked down at her own hands.
Taliah continued.
"The child is told enough to keep him still. Not enough to make him refuse."
Vincent weighed that.
He nodded once. "Accepted."
The Shaman said quietly, "Dangerous."
Taliah answered without looking at him, "Everything useful is."
That line, Vincent thought, had probably built this camp and buried half the people who had helped build it.
Ragan appeared at the edge of the lean-to then, silent as usual, which meant the urgency in his presence carried more weight than shouting would have.
Taliah looked up. "What?"
"The boy is awake," Ragan said. "Fever again. Edge blackening further."
No names.
No extra explanation.
This was the child, then.
The first patient.
Julia stiffened.
The Shaman rose at once. Faster than age usually allowed him. So this mattered to him beyond theory too.
Taliah stood with him. "Bring him."
Ragan shook his head. "He can walk. Barely."
Taliah made a quick decision. "Then we don't parade him through camp."
Good.
That meant some dignity still remained in the place.
She looked to Vincent.
"Now you see him. You do nothing yet."
Another good decision.
Observe first.
Vincent stood carefully. The body objected in the usual places—side, lungs, legs—but held.
Julia rose beside him.
The gauntlet pulsed once.
Hungry.
Listening.
As if it already knew what kind of flesh was coming near.
They crossed the camp together toward the far side, where the tents thinned and a small fire had been set apart from the others.
Quarantine, Vincent thought at once.
Not full isolation. Enough distance to calm fear and mark danger.
A woman sat there with a boy of perhaps ten or eleven, wrapped in blankets despite the fire and sweating through them. His face was too thin from recent illness. His eyes were alert in the way children's eyes became alert when they understood adults had run out of easy lies.
His lower leg had been stripped of wrappings.
The wound sat just above the ankle.
Old cut.
Poor healing.
And at the edges—
black.
Not dried blood. Not ordinary infection. A dark branching stain beneath the skin, thin as roots at first glance and wronger the longer the eye stayed on it.
The gauntlet pulsed hard enough to make Vincent's left hand twitch.
Julia saw it.
So did the Shaman.
So did the boy.
"Is that the hand?" the child asked.
No fear in the question.
Only the directness of someone too tired to waste effort pretending not to notice what every adult was arranging around him.
Taliah crouched before him.
"It might be," she said.
The boy looked past her to Vincent again.
"You don't know."
Vincent answered before anyone else could.
"No."
The honesty landed.
The child swallowed once, then looked at his own leg.
"What happens if it works?"
The Shaman said, "The black leaves."
"What happens if it doesn't?"
No one spoke for half a beat.
Then Vincent said, "We stop before guessing becomes harm."
The boy studied him.
Children in dangerous places learned quickly how to weigh adults by what they refused to say.
At last he nodded once.
Not trust.
Acceptance of the shape of the room.
Julia's voice came quietly from Vincent's side.
"He deserves your name."
Everyone heard it.
The boy looked from her to Vincent.
Fair enough.
Vincent said, "Vincent."
The child frowned slightly. "That's all?"
In another life, in another hall, the answer might have been different.
Here it was enough.
"Yes."
The boy thought about that. Then said, "I'm Halen."
There.
Now the wound had a body.
Now the test had a name attached to it.
Much worse.
Much better.
Taliah rose.
"We do this at first light," she said. "Not in dark. Not when fear grows shapes that aren't there."
The Shaman nodded agreement.
Julia looked relieved and more frightened at once.
Vincent looked at Halen's leg and then at the gauntlet, which had gone very still after the first hard pulse, as if concentrating.
First light.
Enough time to think.
Not enough to escape the question.
The camp around them had stopped pretending not to care now. Even from a distance, Vincent could feel eyes on the quarantine fire, on the child, on the hand that might save him, worsen him, or teach everyone present exactly what kind of thing they had brought into Dayakan.
Halen looked at Vincent one last time and asked the question no adult had yet asked plainly.
"Will it hurt?"
Vincent held the boy's gaze.
"Yes," he said.
Halen nodded as though that answer, at least, made the rest easier to place.
Good.
Better truth than a gentle lie before dawn.
Taliah dismissed them with a movement of her hand, and the little circle broke apart.
But the camp did not.
It tightened.
Watches shifted earlier. Fires were fed lower. Voices around the evening meal stayed close to the same subject no matter what words they wore. Serya watched from the women's fire with her face turned toward Halen's tent often enough to stop pretending she didn't care. Ragan checked the perimeter twice before full dark.
And Vincent returned to the lean-to with one image fixed too clearly in his mind:
a child's leg,
black branching under the skin,
and the gauntlet on his arm going still not because it was satisfied—
but because it was waiting.
First light, Taliah had said.
Enough time for rules.
Enough time for fear.
Enough time for the camp to decide whether it wanted a cure, a weapon, or a reason to burn him before sunrise.
Julia sat down beside him again after dark, close enough that her shoulder almost touched the support post behind him.
"You can still refuse in the morning," she said.
Vincent watched the quarantine fire across camp.
No.
Not after seeing Halen.
That, too, was part of the trap.
Useful things were easiest to employ once they had been made personal.
"Yes," he said.
Julia looked at him.
Then she followed his gaze to the far fire and understood what his answer really meant.
The gauntlet pulsed once.
Slow.
Measured.
Hungry.
And all across Dayakan, the camp held itself taut around the shape of dawn.