Holding its Breath
THE ROAD SOUTH STRETCHED LONGER THAN I REMEMBERED.
Not just in distance—though that was considerable, days of travel through territory I’d crossed only once before in the opposite direction. But in feeling. In the way each mile seemed to require more effort than the last.
Three Hellbeasts moved through it with steady, ground-eating strides. Zaire’s beneath me—the same mount he’d ridden at the Harvest. Lucivar rode ahead on his own Hellbeast, the one that had carried me from Hollowspire, golden hair catching sunlight as he scanned for threats. The third carried supplies.
Forest gave way to scrubland as elevation changed, then back to forest in valleys. Villages dotted the distance like scattered thoughts—small clusters of humanity going about their lives mostly oblivious to the forces gathering around them.
At first, everything felt… normal.
Too normal.
Birds sang. Grass grew. The sun rose and set with reliable indifference. Farmers worked their fields. Children played in village squares.
Life continuing as though healing wasn’t dying, as though everything was fine.
The dissonance was unsettling.
The first sign came on the fourth day.
We’d been traveling since just after dawn under overcast sky. The air smelled of approaching storm—ozone and damp earth, making my head ache dully.
A farmer flagged us down near a crossroads, panic written across his weathered face—eyes wide, breathing hard from running.
His wife had cut her leg badly on a plow blade. Nothing life-threatening, but deep enough to need attention.
Zaire slowed at once. Lucivar stayed mounted, eyes sharp, hand resting near a blade. Watching for threat, for ambush.
I dismounted before anyone said anything.
Because this was what I did. Someone hurt, I helped.
The farmer led us to a small house, his wife sitting on their doorstep with a bloodied cloth wrapped around her calf. Pale but composed, jaw set against pain.
The wound was clean when I unwrapped it—a single straight cut from sharp metal, edges neat despite depth. Bleeding steadily. No foreign matter visible.
Straightforward. The kind of thing my hands knew better than my mind.
I drew the rune.
Fingers traced the familiar pattern, movements automatic. Green shimmering light began to bloom—
—and stalled.
Just for a breath. Maybe less. A hesitation so brief the farmer didn’t notice.
But I felt it.
That terrible lag. That pause where certainty used to live.
My stomach dropped, cold spreading through my chest.
I forced my focus, pushed gently instead of instinctively, deliberately rather than automatically. Whispered mend with more intention than the word usually required.
The cut closed.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
The flesh knit with visible effort instead of fluid certainty, skin pulling together in increments I could watch. Like watching a door close with rusty hinges.
Sweat beaded at my temples despite this being simple healing. My hands trembled slightly by the time it was done.
But it worked. The wound closed. New pink skin covered what had been open flesh. The bleeding stopped.
Success. Technically.
But wrong. Fundamentally wrong in ways the farmer couldn’t see but I felt in every nerve.
The farmer thanked me profusely, reaching for his belt pouch to press coins into my hands—payment I didn’t take, shaking my head and stepping back.
He hurried away with his wife, relief outweighing everything else.
I stood there in their yard, staring at my palm.
“That took longer,” Lucivar said casually, golden eyes sharp despite conversational tone.
Not accusation. Observation.
“Yes,” I replied, the word flat, carrying all the weight of acknowledgment I couldn’t elaborate on yet.
Zaire didn’t speak.
Just sat on his Hellbeast, utterly still, watching me with intensity that made my skin prickle.
But I felt the shift in him through the bond—alert sharpening into something more focused. Fear bleeding through underneath. Not for himself. For me.
By the sixth day, it was unmistakable.
Every healing took effort now. Real exertion that left me tired, that required conscious focus rather than instinctive response, that made my hands shake and my head ache.
Every rune felt heavier—the light less bright, the manifestation sluggish.
Every success felt conditional—not “this will work” but “this might work if I try hard enough.”
It wasn’t failure yet.
The magic still worked. The healings still succeeded. People were still helped.
But it was erosion.
Gradual, inexorable wearing away of something fundamental. Like watching a cliff face slowly crumble into the sea.
As if distance mattered, as if the castle’s wards had been shielding me from the full weight of what we faced.
Or maybe the land itself had learned to hesitate.
I didn’t say it aloud, didn’t voice the fear crystallizing with each difficult healing.
But I felt it.
The null-rot wasn’t localized.
It was spreading.
And if it was this bad already, this early in our journey—
How much worse would it be closer to Hollowspire?
I pushed the thoughts down and kept riding south.
Toward home. Toward Maevyn. Toward hope that felt increasingly fragile with each mile.
We reached the village just before dusk on the seventh day.
The sun was setting behind us, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. The air was cooling rapidly, carrying the scent of cook fires.
It was small. Maybe two dozen buildings clustered around a central square with a well. Quiet in that particular way villages had at this hour, the day’s work done.
Neat.
Too neat.
Flowers lined the paths between buildings—not wild growth but cultivated beds showing recent care. Windows glowed warmly with candlelight, shutters open rather than barred against threat. Children laughed somewhere out of sight, playing games that required peace to play.
Everything was—normal. Peaceful. Functioning exactly as villages should function when nothing is wrong.
“This one hasn’t been touched,” Lucivar remarked, sniffing the air. “No fear. No panic. No smell of sickness or recent death.”
I wanted to believe him.
But something felt wrong. Not dangerously wrong. Just—off.
They welcomed us openly when we rode into the square.
Villagers emerged from homes, expressions curious rather than fearful, approaching with appropriate caution but not terror.
Food was offered—bread still warm from ovens, cheese, dried meat, apples. Water drawn fresh from the well. A place by the communal fire.
No flinching at Zaire’s presence when he dismounted. No tension sharp enough to taste.
A few wary glances, yes—eyes tracking Zaire and Lucivar, noting their nature. But nothing unusual for Vampyres passing through human territory.
Natural caution. Not terror.
“We’ve been blessed,” the village headman said proudly when asked how they fared. “No sickness. No trouble. We keep to ourselves, work hard, help each other.”
Relief loosened something tight in my chest.
Maybe—
Maybe this place really was untouched. Maybe corruption hadn’t spread everywhere.
Maybe Hollowspire would be like this.
Hope, fragile and desperate, began to bloom.
A healer approached me quietly while the others talked.
She was older than me by decades—mouse-brown hair streaked with gray pulled back in a practical braid, light skin worn and wrinkled by time. Bright brown eyes, sharp despite the lines around them, assessed me with intelligence and experience. Her hands were calloused from years of work, nails stained with herb residue.
She smelled of herbs and smoke and something familiar—the scent all healers carried.
“You’re the healer,” she said softly, voice pitched low.
Not a question. Recognition of kind by kind.
“Yes.”
Her gaze flicked to Zaire standing by the fire, then back to me, bright brown eyes sharp and assessing.
“Please,” she said, voice even softer now, barely above whisper, trembling slightly despite her composure.
One word. Simple. Carrying enormous weight.
“Don’t heal anyone here.”
The words knocked the breath from my lungs like physical blow.
“What?” I whispered, not understanding.
She leaned closer, close enough that I could see tears gathering in the corners of her eyes despite the careful control in her voice.
“We’re managing,” she said, words spilling out in quiet rush. “We’re careful. We don’t draw too much attention. We’re surviving.”
She swallowed hard, throat working.
“If you heal here—if something goes wrong—it will spread.”
“Spread?” I asked, though part of me already knew.
“The doubt,” she said, voice breaking slightly on the word, tears finally spilling over.
My hands went cold, all the blood draining from them.
“They’ve been telling us,” she continued, eyes shining with unshed tears, “that immortal healing breaks things. That healers bound to Vampyres corrupt natural magic. That it makes the rest of us weaker.”
The doctrine. The systematic campaign of doubt translated into simple terms.
“That’s a lie,” I said immediately.
“I know,” she replied, and the certainty in her voice made it worse somehow.
She knew it was lie. Believed me. Trusted her own experience.
And still feared what my presence might do.
“But belief doesn’t care about truth.”
The statement settled between us like judge’s verdict, final and unarguable.
She was right. Truth and belief were different things. And belief—collective belief that had been systematically cultivated—was stronger than truth.
I looked around the village then, seeing it with new eyes.
The warm lights in windows—not comfort but careful performance of normalcy. The calm faces—not peace but desperate maintenance of composure. The children playing—allowed to play only because adults were working so hard to maintain illusion.
A facade. Brittle and carefully maintained, threatening to shatter at any moment.
“They’re not attacking us,” I realized, the understanding spreading cold through my chest.
She nodded, tears still falling silent down her cheeks. “They don’t need to.”
The simple truth of it was devastating.
No violence required. No raids or fires or executions.
Just—doubt. Fear. The suggestion that healing might fail, might cause harm.
And villages doing the rest themselves. Isolating. Avoiding attention. Making themselves small and careful and so very afraid.
I stepped back slowly, horror blooming in my chest.
Behind me, Zaire had gone utterly still.
He hadn’t heard the words—was too far away, and we’d spoken too quietly.
But he’d felt the weight of them land inside me through the bond.
I shook my head slowly, denial automatic despite knowing denial changed nothing.
“They’re turning healing into a risk,” I whispered, barely audible. “Into something people are afraid to accept.”
Not just undermining healing directly through null-runes, but indirectly through fear. Making help itself dangerous.
The perfect trap.
“Yes,” the healer said, voice carrying infinite weariness. “And we can’t afford to be afraid.”
Because fear was poison. Fear made healing fail. Fear was the mechanism through which corruption spread.
But how did you choose not to be afraid when fear was justified?
I backed away fully then, putting distance between myself and the village healer, between myself and the proof that we were already too late, that corruption had already spread farther than we’d understood.
Heart hammering, pulse loud in my ears, breathing shallow.
This village wasn’t untouched by corruption.
It was holding its breath.
Walking carefully, speaking quietly, making themselves small and hoping—desperately hoping—that if they didn’t draw attention, maybe they’d be spared.
And the Slayers hadn’t needed to spill blood to make that happen.
Just—doubt. Whispers. The patient work of making people afraid.
And people doing the rest themselves.
We didn’t stay for the meal they’d offered.
Made polite excuses—needed to cover more ground, grateful for hospitality but couldn’t impose further.
They accepted the departure with relief barely hidden, glad to see us go, hoping our leaving meant the danger we represented would leave with us.
We rode out under the cover of night, stars beginning to appear overhead, darkness wrapping around us.
The Hellbeasts moved quietly, carrying us away from the village that looked peaceful but was actually terrified.
I pressed my forehead briefly to Zaire’s shoulder, needing the contact, exhaustion pulling at my bones.
“They’re winning without fighting,” I said quietly, voice muffled against leather and cold skin.
No battles. No casualties.
Just—belief. Eroding. Crumbling. Turning into doubt that spread faster than any disease.
Zaire’s grip tightened on the reins, knuckles going white.
“Then we change the rules,” he replied, voice low and controlled but carrying edge of something desperate.
But even as he said it, I felt the truth ripple through us both through the bond—
Understanding that contradicted the words.
Doubt seeping through despite desire to believe otherwise.
We had maybe weeks before the tipping point was reached. Maybe less.
The Hellbeasts continued south through darkness.
Toward Hollowspire. Toward Maevyn. Toward home that might hold answers or might just confirm there were no answers.
And behind us, a village held its breath.
And waited.
And hoped that staying quiet would be enough to survive.
While the world around them slowly learned that healing couldn’t be trusted.
The stars burned cold overhead.
And we rode on through darkness that seemed deeper than it should be.
Hoping against hope that Maevyn had answers we desperately needed.
Before it was too late.
If it wasn’t already.
