The patient was not a king.
He was a boy. Maybe fourteen, maybe younger. Hard to tell with the Thread-rot. It aged people unevenly, like a photograph left in acid, or a face seen through water disturbed by ripples.
Kael had never seen Thread-rot before. Not in his old life, where the worst diseases had names like diabetes and the flu. But he knew it the moment he stepped into the examination room.
The smell gave it away. Not decay. Something worse.
Unmaking. The scent of a library book burning. A photograph fading in sunlight. A name on the tip of your tongue that vanishes when you try to speak it.
The boy lay on a steel table. Someone had strapped him down. Not cruelly. Necessarily. His fingers twitched against the leather restraints, and where they touched, the metal seemed to thin. Like a photograph overexposed. Like reality losing interest in maintaining itself.
A constable stood in the corner. Heavy man. Sweating despite the chill. He held a truncheon like he wanted to use it on something but couldn't remember what.
"Dr. Veyne," the constable said. No warmth. "Didn't expect to see you vertical. Heard you were under the weather."
Kael ignored him. He moved to the table. His hands—Silas's hands—reached out and touched the boy's wrist.
The skin was hot. Wrong-hot. Not fever. Something that radiated upward from the bones, as if the marrow had been replaced with smoldering coal.
"How long?" Kael asked. The question came out automatically. Clinical. He didn't know where it came from. Silas's memories, maybe. Leaking through like water through a cracked dam.
"Three days since he collapsed in the market," the constable said. "Two since the rot set in. One since he started talking nonsense."
"What kind of nonsense?"
The constable's jaw tightened. "He says there's a door in the air. Behind the cathedral. He says the Unmade are knocking. And he says—" A glance at the boy. "He says Dr. Veyne gave him the key."
Kael's fingers froze on the boy's pulse.
The girl in the doorway—he still didn't know her name—drew a sharp breath.
"That's a lie," she said. But she didn't sound sure.
Kael looked down at the boy's face. The eyes were open. White, entirely white, like boiled eggs left too long in the pot. But they tracked Kael's movement. They saw him.
"Doctor," the boy whispered. His voice was two voices. A child's, and something underneath it. Something that had never learned to speak with human vocal cords. "You came. I knew you'd come. You always come when we hurt."
Kael should have been terrified. He was terrified. But another emotion layered beneath it. Something that belonged to Silas. Guilt. Recognition. A horrible, bone-deep familiarity.
"I don't know you," Kael said.
The boy smiled. His teeth were black. "You will. You already do. Look closer, Doctor. Use your eye."
Kael blinked.
And something broke.
Not in the room. In his head. A dam he hadn't known existed. Suddenly, the world was different. The boy on the table wasn't just a boy. He was a tangle of light. Colors, woven together like thread in a rotting shroud. (No. Not a shroud. Like wires in a damaged machine. Like roots choking each other.)
The Vital Thread glowed red, pulsing weakly around the boy's heart. The Kinetic Thread was a dull blue, barely flickering in his hands and feet. And wrapped around both, strangling them, was a third color. Black. Not darkness.
Anti-light. A color that made Kael's stomach twist because his brain couldn't process it, couldn't file it under any category he understood.
He could see the rot.
Literally see it. The black thread was unraveling the others, pulling them apart fiber by fiber.
"What," Kael whispered. His head throbbed. "What is this?"
The boy's smile widened. "The Surgeon's Eye. You finally opened it. He'll be so pleased."
"Who?"
"The Hollow King. Your favorite patient." The boy's body arched against the straps.
The black threads spasmed. "He sent me as a gift. A reminder. He says you have one year, Doctor. One year to finish what you started. Or he'll open the Fracture right here, right in Vareth's pretty cathedral, and unmake every soul you ever saved."
The constable shouted. The girl screamed.
Kael didn't hear them.
He was staring at the threads. At the precise point where the black one looped around the red. He could see how it connected. Could see the weakness in the knot.
His hand moved. Reached for the instrument tray beside the table. His fingers closed around a scalpel.
Not to cut flesh. To cut the thread.
He didn't know how he knew. He just knew.
The scalpel descended. Not toward the boy's skin. Toward the space above it. Toward the black thread.
For a fraction of a second, the blade seemed to pass through nothing but air.
Then it caught.
The black thread snapped.
The boy screamed. The room shook. The gas lamps flared crimson, then died.
In the darkness, Kael Vance—wearing a dead man's face, holding a dead man's blade—felt something cold settle into his chest.
Not fear rather a Purpose.
"Get out," he told the constable. His voice was steady. Terrifyingly steady. "Both of you. Now."
"But the boy—"
"Will live. If you leave. Now."
They left. The girl last, her green eyes wide, her mouth open.
When the door closed, Kael looked down at the boy. The black thread was gone. The red and blue remained, tangled but intact.
The boy's eyes had cleared. Brown now. Human. Tears streaming down his face.
"Why?" the boy asked. "Why did you save me? He said you wouldn't. He said you wanted us all to break."
Kael set the scalpel down. His hand was shaking. Not from fear. From the Taint. He could feel it already. A cold spot on his palm where he'd held the blade. Where he'd touched the Void.
"Because," Kael said, "the bastard who made you is next. And I need to know exactly what I'm cutting."
He looked up at the window. The aurora scars flickered across the dawn sky. Beautiful. Wrong.
Kael Vance smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was Silas's smile. Sharp. Tired. Hungry.
"Tell your king," he said to the boy. "Tell him the doctor is making house calls."
Outside, the bells of Vareth Cathedral rang six times.
And somewhere in the city, someone began to laugh.