CW: Graphic violence, body horror, death.
POV: Seraphina
Screaming woke her before dawn.
Seraphina grabbed her blade and was out of bed before her eyes fully opened. The sound came from the infirmary wing. Many voices, not one.
She threw open her door to find Caelan already in the corridor, half-dressed and armed.
"The infirmary," he said.
They sprinted down the stairs together.
Guards crowded the corridor outside the infirmary doors, weapons drawn, refusing to advance. Terror held them frozen. A healer stumbled through the doors, her robes splattered with blood that was not her own.
"They turned." Her voice cracked. "The ones from yesterday. The kitchen boy and the maid. They stopped breathing and then they got up."
Seraphina's blood went cold. Those were the two she had promised to heal this morning. The two whose corruption had spread too deep for her to clear completely yesterday.
She had waited too long. Tomorrow had come, and it was already over.
"How many now?" she demanded.
"Four. Maybe five." The healer's hands shook violently. "They bit others before we realized what was happening. There are people trapped inside. Healers. Patients."
Glass shattered somewhere beyond the doors. Another scream cut through the wood.
Thalion appeared at her shoulder with his blade already drawn. "We go in now."
Caelan took the left flank. Thalion took the right. Seraphina called her fire and kicked open the doors.
The infirmary had become a slaughterhouse.
Beds lay overturned across the floor. Medicine pooled in broken glass and spilled tinctures. Blood smeared the walls where desperate hands had clawed for escape.
The kitchen boy she had tried to save stood over a fallen healer, feeding with frantic hunger. His skin had gone gray and his eyes were black pits that held nothing human. Across the room, the maid from the storage room crouched over what remained of a patient too weak to flee.
Two more creatures moved between the beds, hunting survivors who cowered beneath thin mattresses. Fresh turns, victims bitten in the initial chaos who had changed within minutes.
Four undead. And fresh wounds on the survivors meant more would follow soon.
"Clear the left," Seraphina ordered. "I take the center."
Her fire surged forward and caught the kitchen boy in the chest before anyone could respond. The undead thing made that terrible soundless scream, the pressure against the skull, and crumbled to ash.
Guilt hit her unexpectedly. She had held his hand yesterday and promised him she would return.
Thalion engaged the maid with precise blade work. Steel could not kill what was already dead. It could only slow them, create openings. Caelan's wind magic slammed one of the fresh turns against the far wall and pinned it there.
"Now," Caelan shouted.
Golden flames answered. Another body burned and collapsed into ash.
The final two went down in quick succession. Thalion's vines pinned one while Seraphina burned it. Caelan's wind held the last until fire consumed it entirely.
Heavy silence fell over the infirmary.
Four destroyed. But in the back of the room, survivors huddled behind overturned beds. A healer clutched her arm where fresh blood seeped through her fingers. A patient convulsed on his cot with foam at his lips and skin already graying.
They had been bitten minutes ago. And they were turning.
The Captain of the Royal Guard stepped forward, blade drawn. His face was hard with pragmatic calculation.
"Kill them before they rise." His voice was hard with authority. "We have seen what happens. End it now, clean, before they become more of those things."
"No." Seraphina moved between him and the fallen healer with fire flickering at her fingertips. "She is breathing. She is human. I can save her."
"You do not know that. We cannot risk more of those creatures loose in the palace."
"I saved two yesterday. The chambermaid and the guard are alive because I burned the corruption from their blood before it spread too far." She met his eyes without flinching. "Let me try."
The Captain's jaw tightened. He looked to Thalion, who had been watching the exchange in silence.
"Your Highness?"
Thalion studied Seraphina for a long moment. Something unreadable passed through his expression.
"Let her try," he said finally. "If she fails, we do what must be done."
The Captain stepped back, though his blade remained ready.
"Hold her down," Seraphina said. "Both arms. Keep her from moving."
Caelan knelt beside the healer and pinned her shoulders to the floor with gentle firmness. Thalion hesitated, then secured her legs.
Seraphina placed her hands on the bite wound and called the D'Lorien healing fire.
Golden flames washed over the healer's arm and sank into the wound, chasing the darkness coiled inside her blood. The curse was spreading through her veins toward her heart.
Seraphina burned it out, and the healer screamed as her back arched off the floor. Gray skin rippled as it fought against the golden light.
Seraphina pushed harder. The fire demanded everything she had.
The darkness shattered. The healer went limp.
For a terrible moment, no one breathed.
Then the woman's chest rose and fell. Color flooded back into her cheeks. The gray faded from her arm, leaving only the wound behind. A normal wound bleeding red.
"She is alive." Wonder colored Caelan's voice. "You cured her."
Seraphina swayed as the room tilted around her. "Bring me the others. Everyone who was bitten. Now."
They brought them one by one.
The patient who had been convulsing. Two more with fresh wounds from the chaos. A guard bitten while defending the door.
Seraphina knelt beside the first and burned the curse from his blood. The effort drained her more than she expected, and when she finished, her hands trembled and her vision swam at the edges.
"Water," she managed.
Caelan pressed a flask into her hands. She drank deeply. Water could not restore what she had lost. The D'Lorien healing drew from reserves that rest alone could not replenish.
"There are restorative draughts in the supply cabinet," one of the surviving healers said. "If they were not destroyed."
Caelan found them. Small glass vials filled with amber liquid. Seraphina drank one and felt warmth spread through her chest, pushing back the exhaustion without eliminating it.
She moved to the second patient and burned the darkness from her veins. By the time she finished, the draught's effects were already fading.
Another vial, another cure. Each one cost more than the last.
"Convenient." Thalion's voice came from behind her, quiet enough for only her to hear. "The curse appears. You are blamed. And now you are the only one who can cure it."
The accusation landed and she filed it away for later.
She kept working. "You think I did this to myself? To my own people?"
"I think it is a very effective way to become indispensable. To transform from suspect to savior in a single night."
The fourth patient was too far gone.
She knelt beside him, an older man mauled in the initial chaos. His breathing had already stopped. She called the healing fire anyway, desperate, reaching for the darkness inside him.
The curse was everywhere. It had spread too completely. There was nothing left to save.
She pulled back and the man's eyes opened. Black and empty.
Thalion's blade took his head before he could rise.
Seraphina stared at the body and at her hands, which were glowing faintly with golden fire that had come too late.
"You cannot save them all," Thalion said without comfort.
She reached for her third draught. The warmth felt sharper this time, almost painful.
The fifth cure nearly broke her. A young healer barely more than a girl, bitten while trying to protect her patients. The curse had moved fast. Seraphina moved faster, pouring everything into burning it out. When the girl opened her eyes, they were brown and human and alive.
"Thank you," the girl whispered. "Thank you."
Seraphina could not answer. Her throat had closed around something that might have been a sob.
"One more." Caelan's hand found her shoulder. "Can you do one more?"
She nodded because she did not trust her voice.
The sixth patient lived, barely. She had to dig deeper than she had ever gone before, scraping the bottom of reserves she did not know she had. When she finished, she collapsed forward onto her hands.
"That is four draughts," Caelan said. "Any more will do more harm than good."
"I know." She forced herself upright while the room spun around her. "Is that everyone?"
"Everyone we found in time."
Four saved. Two lost. The math would haunt her for weeks.
But four people would see tomorrow because of her fire.
"My lady!"
The voice came from the infirmary entrance. Familiar and desperate and wrong.
Seraphina turned toward the entrance.
Yona stood in the doorway, one hand pressed against her arm. Blood seeped through her fingers in steady pulses. Her face was the color of old parchment.
"I tried to help the healers evacuate." Her voice wavered. "One of them grabbed me. I thought it was reaching for help. I did not realize it had already turned."
She pulled her hand away from the wound.
The bite was deep and ragged. Gray was already creeping up from the wound, threading through her veins in dark lines.
The world narrowed to a single point.
"No." The word scraped out of Seraphina's throat. "No, no, no."
She crossed the room and caught Yona before her knees buckled. The woman who had waited eight years. Who knew the girl Seraphina had been before everything burned. Who had risked everything to find her way back.
"Sit. Sit down. I can fix this."
Yona sank to the floor, and Seraphina went with her, cradling her head, pressing her hands against the wound. The gray had already passed her elbow, spreading faster than she had seen before.
"My lady." Yona's voice was fading. "You have done so much tonight. You do not have to..."
"Do not. Do not say that." Seraphina's hands shook as she reached for her fire. "I am going to heal you. Like the others. You are going to be fine."
She called the D'Lorien flames.
Nothing.
She reached deeper, scraping at the place where the golden fire lived, where her mother's bloodline burned eternal. She found only ashes. Cold and empty and hollow.
"No. Please."
A flicker sparked at her fingertips and died before it could catch. Her soulwell was spent. Four draughts had held her together. Now there was nothing left to hold.
"Seraphina." Caelan knelt beside her, his voice cracking. "You have nothing left."
"Then give me yours!" She grabbed his hands, pressing them over the wound. "Your magic. Feed it to me like we did with the wards. Please, Caelan, please."
"I cannot." The words broke something in his voice. "The healing needs your fire. Your bloodline. Wind cannot burn out corruption. I would give you everything I have, but it would not save her."
She knew that. She had known it before she asked. But knowing did not stop the scream building in her chest.
The gray had reached Yona's shoulder. Creeping toward her heart.
"My lady." Yona's hand found hers, weak and trembling. "It is all right."
"It is not all right!" Tears burned down Seraphina's face. She did not bother wiping them. "You waited eight years. Eight years, Yona. You found me. You came back. I cannot lose you now."
Her voice shattered. Her chest was tight and her throat raw.
Yona's thumb brushed across her knuckles. The same gesture she had used when Seraphina was a child, crying over some forgotten hurt. The same gentle touch that said everything would be well.
"My mother always said you had Lady Adrianne's fire." Yona's eyes were growing dim. "She was right. The woman you have become. I got to see it. That is enough."
"It is not enough. Nothing is enough." Seraphina pressed her forehead to Yona's, tears falling onto the older woman's cheeks. "You are the last one who knew me before. Before they took everything. Before I became this. When you go, that girl dies too."
"No, my lady." A faint smile crossed Yona's gray-tinged lips. "She lives in you. Always has. I just got to see it clearly."
Yona's breathing was slowing. Her skin cold beneath Seraphina's hands.
"Stay with me. Please. I will find a way. I just need more time."
"There is no more time." Yona's voice was barely a whisper now. "But it is all right. I kept my mother's promise. Protect what Lady Adrianne left behind. Find you when the time was right. I did both. That is all I ever wanted."
Her eyes fluttered closed.
"Yona. Yona!"
Gray covered her chest now. Her heartbeat was slowing beneath Seraphina's palm, thready and weak and fading with every passing second.
Seraphina screamed for more draughts. The surviving healers shook their heads. Nothing left. She screamed for anyone, anything, any magic that could help.
The infirmary had gone silent.
Everyone was watching the Flamebearer fail to save the one person she could not bear to lose.
Thalion stood at the edge of the room, watching. His expression was unreadable. Then, without a word, he turned and strode out of the infirmary.
Seraphina barely noticed. She did not care where he was going. Did not care if he was fetching a blade to do what he thought was necessary. All that mattered was the woman dying in her arms.
Caelan's arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her steady as she broke apart.
"I am sorry," he whispered into her hair. "I am so sorry."
Yona's breathing grew shallow and ragged. Each breath came slower than the last.
Corruption spreading. Reaching for her heart.
And Seraphina had nothing left to stop it.
She pressed her forehead to Yona's, tears falling onto the older woman's cold cheeks, and waited for the end.