Mathieu's pain was a physical thing, a symphony of broken fingers and bruised ribs.
But the thing spreading up his arm was a horror of another nature. It was not an infection, not a bruise. It was a corruption.
He could feel it, a coldness that came not from the night but from within, as if a piece of a tombstone had been embedded beneath his skin.
The black veins crawling across his wrist were not just discoloration; they seemed to move, redrawing the map of his humanity. In a panic, he clenched his good hand over his arm, as if to stop the black tide from rising to his heart.
Leagues away, in her library, Catherine felt a fraction of his terror. The connection she maintained with him had become a conduit for pain and fear. She saw, through his eyes, the corruption as it spread. Immediately, she focused her vision not on Mathieu himself, but on the wound. She examined the threads of the curse.
What she saw chilled her even more than the discovery of Soren's surveillance.
The threads were not just black; they were a steely, rigid gray, unbending and domineering. They were not just destroying Mathieu's life threads; they were rewriting them.
She saw the thread of his complex thought, his bureaucrat's intellect, fray and unravel, while a new thread, simple, bestial, and focused on a primitive loyalty, began to weave itself in its place.
This was the power of the Pathway of Pride, she realized. It didn't just kill or subjugate. It debased. It took what made a man a man and broke it, transforming him into something lesser, something that could only serve.
Milo hadn't just struck him; he had branded him with the essence of his Pathway, marking him as property, a beast. The transformation into a dog would not be a sudden event, but a process, a slow erosion of his soul.
The anger she felt was cold and precise. This was an attack not only on her agent, but on her. The Rook, via his henchman, was sending her a message: Your toys are fragile. I can break them whenever I wish.
Abandoning him was the easy solution. A cursed pawn was a dangerous pawn. But Catherine had not survived by choosing the easy way.
Two reasons imposed themselves on her mind with crystalline clarity. First, Mathieu was the only one who had seen the inside of Park's house, who had faced Milo.
His memories, however fragmented by fear, were a trove of information. Second, this curse was an enemy weapon she did not understand. Healing Mathieu, or at least understanding his wound, was a strategic necessity.
He had become her most valuable research subject.
She couldn't send him to an ordinary physician.
She needed a specialist. An adept of the Pathway of the Scalpel.
She had no time for an elaborate performance. She left her library and walked swiftly to Valerius's apartments. She found him reading, a glass of wine within reach.
"My instrument is broken," she announced without preamble, her voice devoid of its usual mystical softness, replaced by a cold, sharp urgency.
Valerius sat up, surprised by her tone.
"What do you mean? The clerk?"
"The guardians of the relic intercepted him. He escaped, but he was… touched. Wounded by a power the city's physicians will not understand. A wound of the soul manifesting in the flesh." She stared at him, her gaze tolerating no objection.
"Your influence extends everywhere in this city, Magistrate. You know the people who operate in the shadows, the ones who don't ask questions. I need a list. Now. The back-alley doctors, the alchemists, the apothecaries who treat wounds the City Watch must not see. The ones who know that not all fevers come from the swamp."
Her demand was a thinly veiled order. Valerius, seeing the storm in her eyes and fearing the loss of his Oracle if her instrument, was out of commission, did not hesitate. He opened a secret drawer in his desk and took out a small, leather-bound notebook.
He scribbled down a few names and addresses.
"These are the best, or at least the most discreet," he said, handing her the page.
"But they are expensive and dangerous."
Catherine took the list. She scanned it, using her vision to read the threads attached to each name. The first was a charlatan. The second, a drunk. And then, the third.
Doctor Aris Thorne.
The threads emanating from this name were complex: a gray of medical skill, a dirty gold of avarice, and a faint but distinct thread of a sickly, organic green. The signature of an adept of the Pathway of Desecration. A man who understood the flesh and its corruptions. He was her man.
"I need Mathieu brought to this man," she said, pointing to the name. "And I need the doctor paid for his discretion and his services."
Once again, she had to use a messenger. And once again, she had only young Leo at her disposal. It was a terrible risk, sending him out a second time into the night. But she had no choice.
She returned to her library and prepared two envelopes. In the first, she slipped a single gold coin from the deceased owner's purse an exorbitant sum for a simple message and a note for Doctor Thorne:
"A patient of great importance will be arriving. Treat him. Save him. Your silence will be generously rewarded. Further instructions will follow."
In the second, meant for Mathieu, she simply wrote Thorne's clinic address and these words: "Help is coming. Go here. Trust them. I am watching over you."
She entrusted both missives to a terrified but obedient Leo, giving him precise instructions to find Mathieu in the alleys near the Rook's Nest and to deliver the other message to the clinic.
As the boy disappeared into the night, Catherine stood at the window, her heart tight. She had just spent her own resources and exposed her network to a new player in the underworld to save a single pawn. It was an immense gamble.
She projected her vision one last time, a thin and discreet probe. She saw Mathieu, huddled in the shadows, receive the note from Leo. She saw hope rekindle in his threads as he read her words.
Then, she saw him rise, staggering, and begin to walk, a wounded ghost dragging himself through the city toward a slim hope of salvation.
A salvation that Catherine had just purchased at an incalculable risk.