The quiet treatment room smelled of crushed dried mint, bitter willow bark, and the sharp tang of cooling silver salve.
Vella sat upon a low stool beside the examination table, carefully cleaning the inflamed skin along Hajin's shoulder blade with a linen sponge.
"There is no physical necrosis," the healer stated, tilting her brass lamp to inspect the intricate network of silver channels.
"Your flesh is entirely whole, yet your pain receptors are firing as if an iron brand seared through living muscle and bone."
"A pain memory wearing the shape of a burn," he whispered, keeping his palms pressed flat against the edge of the cot.
"I can feel the cold grain of the ash spear, the freezing mud against my knees, and the moment the tether snapped..."
"You will feel both deaths whenever cold rain falls across this valley," Vella warned him gently, setting down her sponge.
"And whenever the ring of a spear echoes across stone, your shoulder blade will remember the sudden strike."
