Chapter 1
Chapter 1 - Ben
Full moon tonight.
Which means exactly fuck-all, magically speaking.
But good luck explaining that to the idiots clogging the ER, all convinced the big shiny sky rock supercharges their capacity to hold magic.
Like lunar light compensates for piss-poor judgment.
Affinitas pod’s packed. Ten beds. Eight full. Bed four’s about to crash hard.
Kid’s lighting up like a power grid—veins flaring under his skin, magic pulsing wild and raw. He’s a Siphon who took more from his Vire than his system could handle. No training. No regulation. Just lust or ego. Probably both.
Classic Siphon Burn.
Now the magic’s trying to boil his insides, trapped, hunting for release. Like lava under a volcano. Either release it, or watch the mountain explode.
The glow on his skin’s bad—bright, jagged. Veins look like fault lines, ready to split. Touch him too long and your gloves melt. Touch him bare, and your skin does.
Sweat’s already starting to steam off his chest. Stinks like scorched blood and stale deodorant. Smells like we’ve got seconds before something ruptures.
No time for diagnostics. Don’t need them anyway. None of the Affinitas providers at Dominion Medical Center do.
Experience teaches you what you’re looking at better than a fucking computer anyway.
Kid’s seconds from cooking his own nervous system. Magic’s got nowhere to go, and no way to quiet down.
“Jules,” I call, already stepping in.
She moves without hesitation, peeling off from Bed Six like she already knew what was happening. “Coming.”
I reach for the kid—two fingers, center of the sternum. Minimal contact. Just enough to complete the circuit without letting him drown me in the flood.
Taking a deep breath, I open up.
The surge hits instantly.
No buildup. No warning. No slow rising of power.
Just magic—panicked, feral, loud as a scream with no mouth. It tears through me, hot and wild and clawing with need. Desperate to get out.
My hand shoots out and slams flat against one of the copper-panel grounding plates that line the walls in this pod.
But raw magic can’t just be shunted off like that. It has to be used. Filtered through the body, translated by the mind, formed and shaped.
So I use it.
I translate the magic from a lethal flood of raw power into electricity, funneling it into the hospital’s subterranean power grid. Magic leaves me in a torrent, dumped straight into the wall panel. The panel begins to glow faintly as the system takes it, just like it was designed to do.
But not every Siphon can channel the same amount of power.
It takes less than a heartbeat before pain ignites along my back, running like wildfire into my veins.
The tattoos light up.
The tattoos no one can see. No one knows about. No one should.
Ink laid deep. Ink made from the Ash of the Heart. Not one heart. Four.
Burned into me like a brand. Like a cage.
Designed to constrict my ability to Siphon. To reduce my capacity to almost nothing.
Too much power through too small a channel. That means pain.
Not the surface-level kind. It’s not something you wince through, or even the kind you scream through.
It’s the kind the roots deep into the marrow, woven through nerves and muscle, leaving no part of the body untouched.
I bite down hard enough to taste salt and metal.
No sound. No flinch.
Just hold. Let it burn. Let it hurt.
Because that’s the point.
Pain means the magic’s moving. Pain means I’m doing it right. Means that someone else is healing.
And I’m already past the point where I can be healed.
“My turn,” Jules snaps. Even after three years in this job, she’s one of the only providers I’ve gotten to know outside of generic greetings. Enough that she can tell when I’m nearing my limit – or trying to push past it.
I step back without protest.
The drop in power hits like coming up for air after too long underwater. Relief sharp enough that it feels almost euphoric.
She moves in—one hand on the kid, one on the grounding plate—and makes it look easy. Clean. Controlled. Like her body was built to handle it. No hesitation, no static in the motion.
The glow in his veins starts to dim. Muscles slacken. His jaw unclenches.
Takes her less than two minutes to drain all the kid’s power. Doesn’t look at me. Just says, low, “You good?”
“Fine.”
It’s a lie, but a well-practiced one. Not that she expects me to say anything else. But she believes in making sure people always have a chance. Wants to offer me a place to open up if I want to.
I don’t. I did that once. I know how it ends. Made the pain from siphoning feel like a warm summer breeze.
“Start cooling protocol. Cardiac monitor. And assign this genius a basic siphoning education module before he cooks himself from the inside out.”
She smiles, faint and dry. “Dr. Marlow’s or the one with the animated squirrel?”
“Both.”
I force myself to stand still, refusing to let echoes of pain make my muscles twitch. The pain in my back’s fading but not fast. Already aggravated from the six other discharges I’ve done tonight. Each time I siphon, it’s like peeling off another layer of skin with a dull knife.
“I’d rather not have to list “stupidity” as his cause of death,” I add.
Jules snorts, already setting up the cold IV. Glances at me. “Take five. You look like hell.” She jerks her chin toward the staff lounge. “Left you a treat.”
“Appreciate it.” I flash her wry grin as I stride out, pretending that every step doesn’t hurt.
It’s a Dr. Pepper.
I crack it open—quiet hiss, sharp fizz—and take a long pull.
Sweet ice-cold chemical perfection. Fucking love this shit. Probably gonna give me diabetes. Or cancer. Or just fuck up my stomach someday.
Don’t care.
I live healthy in every other aspect. Meal prep a diet made of precisely balanced macronutrients. No alcohol. Regular exercise – practical shit like martial arts and rock climbing, not just lifting weights with the gym-bros. Scheduled sleep.
Not for vanity or identity. Necessity.
I need this body to hold. Heart tight. Lungs steady. Blood clean.
Because every time I siphon, I’m playing chicken with a goddamn volcano. And if I misstep—just once—I don’t get a second chance.
People think I’m a low-capacity Siphon. Well-trained, but weak.
I let them. That’s the point. Easier than explaining what I did to myself. Safer than explaining why.
I walk back to the board, soda still in hand. Find my name: Dr. Benedict Reed, M.D., UCA-S.
The last four letters tell people I’m certified by the United Council of Affinitas as a Siphon. Not necessary for most Affinitas – but if you want to work as one, you gotta get board certified. Fucking pain in the ass.
I take a sip, scanning the column of patients under my name.
Affinitas pod’s holding. For now.
Vire in Bed Seven—Ash Poisoning. Not uncommon. People buy black-market Ash, then act surprised when it turns toxic.
This one’s different, though. Slightly off. Haven’t figured out why yet.
I scowl. Take another sip.
I’ll bring her chart home. Look at it when I have more brain cells to spare.
Beds One and Ten—couple with Feedback Shock. Emotional chaos during a transfer. Classic case of too much feeling, not enough control. Or, better known as ‘fucking without thinking it through.’ Separate them. Let the backlash fade. Repair any damage to the body. Should discharge them by morning.
The rest are siphon burns. Variations on a theme.
One shoved quartz crystal up his ass. Did fuck-all to help mitigate the amount of power he tried to pull. CT techs were practically vibrating to show me the scans. Amusing, but I don’t get paid enough to dig rocks out of peoples’ assholes. That’s what interns are for.
I’m half a sip from finishing the can and two words into charting when the overhead tones hit.
Alpha Trauma — Code 99.
Bay 11. ETA: four minutes.
Code 99. Affinitas injury. That’s my team.
Trauma Bay 11’s for injured Affinitas. Built for our kind. Staffed by our kind. People like Jules and me. Born with the affinity for magic.
Most of the team are Siphons. A few are Vires—those bastards who can pull magic straight from the world. They can’t use it, though. Just gather it, carry it. They either pass it off to a Siphon, or it burns them alive. But it’s like handing someone a flash flood and live grenade in one go.
A trained Siphon, one with discipline and a strong mind, can turn that power into damn near anything—shields, flame, static bursts, structural breaks – bend the laws of nature if they want.
Healing’s possible, but it takes immense power and perfect mental control. Out of two billion Affinitas on the planet, less than ten thousand Siphons worldwide can do it.
I should know. I used to be one of them.
I drop the can in the bin. Hollow clink. Move down the hallway towards the bay. Fast, not frantic. Already calculating worst-case damage and how to stabilize whatever comes through the door.
Dr. Marlow waddles into my path like a wind-up elephant in white coat.
“Ben!” he says, cheerful as hell. “Got a case I’d love your eyes on. Got a minute?”
“Nope.” I sidestep him, clean. “Trauma alert.” I nod toward the bay.
“Oh. Right. Yes. Of course…” He fumbles for dignity. Good man. Excellent doc. Shit timing. Worse social sense.
I shut him out and slide into the rhythm that still makes sense—fast hands, faster thinking. Triage on instinct. Save who can be saved. We’re powerful. But we’re not infallible. Not even magic can stop Death.
I grab a PPE gown as I step into the bay. Then pull on my gloves. Jules is there, plus three more: Morgan, a slender girl, moderate-level Vire. Tiffany, a good Siphon, makes up for her lack of capacity with impressive control. And Abram, a beefy Siphon with a heart of gold and enough physical strength to channel a shit ton if he needs to.
We prep for an alpha trauma. Could be a Siphon burnout. Could be a Vire collapse. Could be some unlucky civilian who got too close to something they couldn’t see until it ripped them open.
Trauma caused by magic doesn’t heal clean. The power fuses to the wound, like shrapnel.
You have to pull it out. Strip out the static. Sift through the sparks. Like coaxing glass shards out of raw nerve.
Messy work.
But my team knows how to do it.
The transport rolls in minutes later.
Male. Mid-thirties. Civilian. Non-Affinitas.
His skin’s still burning—third-degree, forty percent coverage, and no fire anywhere in sight.
No heat source. Just magic. Trapped under the surface like silk pulled tight over lightning.
Every time he twitches, he sparks.
Every time we touch him, he screams. Every time we don’t, it’s worse.
It takes four of us—rotating contact and discharge into the wall plates. Sweat running. Muscles locking. One breath at a time. No breaks. No room for error.
The magic feels off—wrong in a way I don’t like. Tainted, maybe. Dirty. Like someone funneled rage into a pipeline and left it to rot.
Probably a backdraft from a Vire losing control. Maybe burning out completely. Can happen fast. Sometimes it just sends a wave of raw magic out, turning everything around them—including people—into a smoking crater. Sometimes, it takes the Vire with them.
The trauma bay fills with that unique smell—sharp, acrid. Burning flesh and old pennies and battery acid. Like a thunderstorm made of bad copper and putrid water.
When it finally drains, the man collapses inward. Skin sags. Shoulders fall. Eyes roll back.
Not safe. But stable. Damage won’t spread.
We get the cooling blankets on. Meds. Fluids. Burn floor can take it from here. His odds are better than most. Non-Affinitas means no risk of rebound. No magic-laced backlash waiting to spark the burning again.
Just pain. Real. Human.
I scrub out fast. Gloves stripped. Hot water and harsh soap to sterilize. Cold water to cool.
Don’t think about the fire still smoldering under my skin.
Don’t think about the ink on my back—still hot, still angry, still doing exactly what it was made for.
Jules appears beside me. No eye contact. No touch. Just her voice, low.
“Family’s here.”
Of course they are. And they’ll want answers.
Magic isn’t a secret, but it’s not common knowledge either. People know about it, but there aren’t Wikipedia articles and PBS documentaries on it.
I towel off. Run my hand through my hair. Old habit—it’s short now. Easier to manage.
I head for the consult room, rehearsing the usual script.
Neutral tone. Soft edges. Enough science to be credible, enough compassion to land.
The door’s open. Only one person inside.
Standing.
Tall. Dark hair. Uniform crisp, regulation cut, black fabric stretched across broad shoulders.
OED.
Order Enforcement Division of the United Council of Affinitas. Like the UN, but governs laws specific to Affinitas. The OED is their version of Interpol. Affinitas law in action. Teeth, not talk. The kind that doesn’t blink when things bleed.
“I’m Dr. Reed, the attending who—” I start, already halfway into the standard lines.
He turns.
And time fractures.
Air. Thought. Breath. Gone.
Dark brown eyes. Handsome face. Unchanged. Calm.
Same expression—steady, collected, controlled. Never panicked. Never flustered.
Lee Markovic.
The man who broke my heart.
The man I never figured out how to stop loving.
