Healing Hall smelled like soap, blood, and the kind of mercy that kept receipts.
The Healing Hall smelled like expensive mercy.
White lilies in crystal bowls. Purification incense curling from silver braziers. Polished marble floors so clean they reflected the wounded back to themselves with unnecessary honesty. Soft curtains. Softer voices. Golden sigils stitched into the walls like sunlight had been domesticated and taught bedside manners.
I hated it immediately.
Hospitals had always made me distrust quiet.
Quiet meant someone was trying not to cry where the patient could hear. Quiet meant debt in clean envelopes. Quiet meant doctors lowering their voices outside a door while pretending the walls were thicker than grief.
Aethermere had improved the aesthetics.
Not the feeling.
Ren walked two steps behind me carrying the folded towel like a sacred offering to poor decision-making. Blood had dried beneath my glove. Null burns pulsed across my palm in time with my heartbeat.
