The clock above the healer’s station reads 1:47 AM. A bewitched teapot in the break room down the hall lets out a low, mournful whistle, as if it too is settling in for the long night. The stack of patient charts on the desk in front of you is dwindling. There’s a quiet so thick you could bottle it.

You don’t say anything, but you don’t have to. Mallory knows you too well. She clicks her tongue.

A voice cuts through the noise — raw and urgent, coming from the direction of the intake ward.

The doors to the emergency ward burst open. A stretcher floats through, propelled by a team of medi-wizards, their robes already splattered with something dark. The patient on the stretcher is barely visible beneath the tangle of white sheets — sheets that are rapidly turning red.

Someone is shouting vitals. Heart rate. Blood loss. Something about unstable magical signatures. You can’t make out the words over the pounding in your ears.

You push through the crowd, reaching the stretcher just as one of the medi-wizards pulls back the sheet.

Male. Late twenties. Dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood. His face is slack, unconscious. A network of black veins pulses beneath his skin, crawling up his neck, curling around his jaw. His breathing is shallow, rattling.

He groans — a low, animal sound of pain — and his head lolls to the side.

The light catches his face.

And your entire world stops.