Three years passed. The "Iron Age" had become the "Green Age." Without the Aetheria siphoning the earth's heat, the forests returned with a vengeance, swallowing the stone cities in a matter of months.
Lyra traveled from village to village, no longer a killer in the shadows, but a wanderer. She heard stories of a "Nameless Healer" in the Western Marches—a man who knew the secrets of herbs and anatomy that no local wise-woman understood.
"He fixed my boy's leg," a farmer told her over a bowl of thin broth. "Didn't use magic. Just used a needle, some silk thread, and a lot of boiling water. Talked strange, too. Like he was mourning a world he never saw."
Lyra felt a spark in her chest. Silk thread. Boiling water. The medical techniques of a man who remembered the 21st century.