# Chapter 248: The Healer's Judgment
The air in the cellar infirmary was thick with the coppery tang of blood and the sharp, antiseptic scent of boiled herbs. It was a smell Sister Judit had come to know as well as the scent of old parchment and incense in the Synod's cloisters, a perfume of desperate, fragile life. Low-slung candles flickered in alcoves carved into the damp stone walls, their light casting long, dancing shadows that made the groans of the wounded seem like a physical presence. Judit moved between the cots, her hands, though stained with grime and dried blood, sure and steady. She was no Gifted healer, not like the ones who could knit flesh with a touch and a prayer. Her magic was quieter, more subtle—the ability to soothe pain, to coax a body's own reserves toward mending, to clean a wound so thoroughly that infection stood no chance. It was a humble Gift, one the Synod had deemed fit only for tending to acolytes and low-ranking Templars, but here, in this hidden sanctuary, it was priceless.
She stopped by the cot of Boro, the hulking fighter whose defensive Gift had shattered his own ribs in the last Trial. His breathing was a shallow, wet rattle. Judit placed a cool cloth on his forehead, her power flaring faintly, a soft blue light emanating from her palms. The light sank into his skin, and the lines of agony on his face eased slightly. His Cinder-Tattoos, a sprawling map of interlocking shields across his chest and arms, were a dull, charcoal grey, the light within them almost extinguished. The Cost had been immense.
"Easy, Boro," she murmured, her voice a low balm against the cellar's oppressive quiet. "Just rest. Let your body do the work."
A few cots over, Finn, the young squire, was awake, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and hero worship. He'd taken a shard of obsidian to the thigh, a nasty wound that Judit had already stitched closed. He watched her every move. "Is he going to be okay, Sister?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
"Boro is strong," Judit said, not turning from her patient. "Stronger than he knows. But the Cost… it takes a toll that even I cannot fully mend. We can only give them the chance to heal themselves." Her heart felt heavy in her chest. She was patching together broken soldiers for a war she wasn't sure they could win. Every life she saved was another soul sent back into the fire, another body to be broken for Soren's cause. She believed in that cause, believed in the rightness of their rebellion against the Synod's cage, but the price, paid in the quiet suffering of men like Boro, felt immense.
The heavy wooden door at the top of the stairs creaked open, the sound cutting through the infirmary's stillness. Judit tensed, her hand instinctively going to the small, concealed knife at her belt. Only a handful of people knew this location. The footsteps on the stone stairs were light, deliberate, and unhurried. A figure descended, silhouetted against the dim light from the upper room. It was a woman, clad in the simple, unadorned grey robes of a Synod penitent. As she stepped into the candlelight, Judit's breath caught in her throat.
It was Anya.
Judit knew of her, of course. Anya was a legend within the Synod, a Gifted healer whose power was said to be miraculous. She could regrow lost limbs, purge the most virulent poisons, and draw a soul back from the very brink of the Cinder-Tax. But she was also a zealot, a true believer who saw the Cinder Cost not as a cruel side effect of a broken world, but as a holy burden, a sacred penance for the sin of wielding such power. Her presence here was not a blessing; it was a judgment.
"Sister Judit," Anya said, her voice as calm and cool as the stone around them. Her eyes, a pale, washed-out blue, swept across the infirmary, taking in the wounded, the makeshift cots, the meager supplies. A flicker of something—pity, perhaps, or contempt—crossed her features. "I see you have been busy playing at salvation."
"Anya," Judit replied, her own voice low and guarded. She straightened up, moving to place herself between the newcomer and her most critical patients. "This is a sanctuary. You are not welcome here."
Anya offered a thin, humorless smile. "Sanctuary? Or a butcher's shop where you prolong the agony? I felt the echoes of their suffering from halfway across the city. A chorus of pain, crying out for proper guidance." She took another step down, her gaze falling on Boro. "His Gift is one of protection. A noble purpose. Yet he has been pushed so far that his own body has become his enemy. This is the price of arrogance. The price of a man who believes he can defy the divine order."
"The divine order is a lie forged by the Synod to keep us in chains," Judit shot back, her voice rising with a passion she rarely allowed herself to show. "These people are fighting for their freedom. They are fighting for a world where their children don't have to bear a Cost for simply being born."
"They are fighting for nothing," Anya said, her voice losing its placid tone and sharpening with steel. "They are fighting against the will of the Bloom itself. The Gift is a shard of the world's agony, a fragment of its death. To wield it is to accept a share of that burden. The Cinder Cost is not a flaw to be fixed; it is a balance to be honored. It is the penance that keeps the darkness at bay." She moved past Judit, her grey robes whispering on the floor. She stopped beside Finn's cot. The young boy shrank back from her intense gaze.
"Your Gift," Anya said to him, her voice softening into a deceptively gentle tone. "It is one of speed, is it not? You move like a flicker of light. A beautiful, fleeting thing. But every time you use it, you burn away a piece of your own lifespan. A fair trade for such a miracle, wouldn't you say?"
Finn looked from Anya to Judit, his eyes wide with confusion. "I… I just do what I'm told."
"Of course you do," Anya cooed, reaching out a hand. Her fingers glowed with a soft, golden light, a stark contrast to Judit's cool blue. "You are a good boy. But you are being led astray. You are being taught to shirk your holy duty." She placed her glowing hand on Finn's wounded leg. The boy gasped, not in pain, but in shock. Judit watched, horrified, as the golden light sank into his flesh. The crude stitches Judit had placed dissolved, and the skin beneath them knitted itself together with impossible speed, leaving behind not a scar, but a faint, golden shimmer. The wound was gone. Healed completely.
But as the light faded, Finn gasped again, this time in a sharp, ragged breath. His face went pale. The Cinder-Tattoos on his arm, a series of jagged lightning bolts, flared with a sudden, intense heat, the grey darkening to a deep, ominous black. A single, fresh crack appeared in the center of the largest tattoo, weeping a thin line of ash.
"What did you do?" Judit demanded, rushing to Finn's side. She pressed her fingers to his neck. His pulse was thready, weak. She placed her own hand on his forehead, trying to soothe him, but her power felt like a drop of water in a desert against the turmoil raging within him.
"I healed him," Anya said calmly, withdrawing her hand. "I have given him the full measure of a miracle. But a miracle is not without its price. The Cost must always be paid. I simply ensured it was paid in full, all at once. He is now pure. His burden is honored."
"You've crippled him!" Judit cried, her voice trembling with fury. "You've burned years of his life away in a single moment for a scratch!"
"A scratch that would have festered," Anya countered, her placid demeanor returning. "A scratch that would have required more of your paltry magic, more of his body's precious energy, drawing out the suffering. I have given him peace. I have given him clarity. He now understands the true nature of his Gift." She looked down at Finn, who was now trembling violently, his eyes wide with a terror far greater than any he had felt in the arena. "Tell him, boy. Tell the good sister that you are grateful."
Finn couldn't speak. He could only stare at the fresh, dark crack in his tattoo, a permanent brand of Anya's "mercy."
The other wounded fighters in the infirmary were now awake, watching the confrontation. A low murmur spread through the room. Some looked at Finn with horror, others with a dawning, fearful awe. Anya's power was undeniable, a display of divine might that made Judit's subtle healing seem like a child's trick.
"You see?" Anya said, turning to face Judit, a triumphant look in her pale eyes. "They understand. They know the truth when they see it. You offer them a lie. You tell them they can fight, they can win, they can escape the Cost. But you cannot. All you do is patch them up and send them back to the Bloom's embrace to be broken again and again. You are not a healer. You are an enabler of their damnation."
"I offer them hope," Judit retorted, standing her ground. "I offer them a chance to see another sunrise. I offer them the belief that their lives have meaning beyond being a sacrifice to a cruel, indifferent universe. What you offer is despair wrapped in the guise of piety."
Anya walked slowly around the infirmary, her gaze sweeping over the other fighters. She stopped by a man whose arm had been crushed, the limb a mangled mess of bone and swollen flesh. "And this one," she mused. "His Gift is one of sonic force. He shatters things with his voice. A powerful, destructive talent. The Cost has taken his hearing. A fitting exchange, don't you think? Silence for the power to break the world."
The man on the cot, a grizzled veteran named Joric, glared at her, his good eye burning with hatred. He couldn't hear her words, but he could feel the contempt radiating from her.
"I could fix this," Anya said, her hand hovering over the ruined arm. "I could restore the bone, mend the muscle, even return his hearing. All in an instant. But the Cost would be… significant. He would likely not see another season. Is that a trade you would make for him, Sister Judit? Would you condemn him to a swift, bright death for a few more months of sound?"
Judit's jaw tightened. "I would give him the choice. Something you seem incapable of."
"The choice is an illusion," Anya snapped, her voice finally losing its composure and ringing with fervor. "There is only the will of the Bloom, only the sacred burden! Soren Vale and his rebellion are an affront to that! He teaches men to run from their penance, to hide from their purpose! He is a heretic leading a flock of fools to a damnation far worse than any the Synod could devise. He is not their savior; he is the architect of their eternal suffering!"
She turned back to Judit, her face inches from the other woman's. The air between them crackled with opposing ideologies, with the conflict between mercy and dogma, hope and resignation.
"You see these men and women as victims," Anya hissed, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "I see them as blessed. They have been chosen to carry a piece of the world's pain. And in their rebellion, in their refusal to accept that honor, they spit on the memory of all who perished in the Bloom. They prolong their suffering for a lost cause." She gestured to the rows of cots, to the frightened, watching faces. "I offer them the peace of acceptance."