I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities

The silence in the triage ward was no longer heavy. It was hollow. It was the vacuum preceding the end.

Two days after her confession Senna Valerius was drowning.

She lay flat on the cot. The pillows were removed because sitting up exhausted her too much. The black web of dead mana corruption had thickened. It climbed her throat like ivy pulsing with a sickening sluggish rhythm that matched her failing heart. Her breath was a shallow bubbling rattle that scraped against the silence of the room.

Vane sat on the stool. His hands were clasped so tightly together his knuckles were white. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest terrified that each one would be the last.

They were out of time. The pact... to build the foundation then transfer the power... was a failure. He was going to inherit nothing but a corpse and a memory of stubbornness that he wasn't strong enough to carry.

The heavy metal door creaked open. Isole Sylvaris slipped inside bringing the scent of clean ozone into the rot.

She didn't need to run diagnostics. She stopped five feet from the cot. Her mismatched eyes took in the scene with clinical finality.

"She has entered terminal decline," Isole said softly. "Her core is crystallizing. The pain will be immense soon if she is still lucid enough to feel it."

She reached into her satchel pulling out a small vial of clear liquid.

"I can administer a sedative. It will ease the transition. She will simply... sleep until she stops."

Vane looked at the vial then at Senna's grey face. He remembered what she said on the roof. I refused to let that thing pass me.

"No," Vane said. His voice was a wrecked rasp but it was absolute.

Isole paused. "Vane. To let her suffer needlessly is cruelty not loyalty."

Vane stood up. The metal stool scraped violently against the concrete. He turned on the High Elf and for the first time there was no charm. There was no deference. No calculated distance in his eyes. There was only the desperation of a cornered animal that refused to accept the trap.

"You told me you could buy time," Vane snarled stepping into her personal space. "You patched the dam. The patch failed. Now I need you to lower the water level."

Isole held her ground though her eyes widened slightly at his intensity. "I have exhausted standard magical protocols. Her channels cannot sustain another reinforcement."

"Then stop using standard protocols," Vane snapped. He grabbed her shoulders. It was a shocking breach of etiquette that made her stiffen. He leaned down to look her dead in the eye.

"I know what you are Isole. You walk around with Life and Death wrapped around your soul. Don't tell me you are out of options. Tell me what the forbidden option is."

He shook her just a little.

"She is a wall Isole. Don't let her fall down in the mud. Help me stand her up."

Isole stared at him. She saw the raw bleeding panic behind his eyes but also a fierce uncompromising demand that mirrored the dying woman on the cot.

Slowly she pulled away from his grip. The air around her grew heavier charged with a static that made the hairs on Vane's arms stand up.

"There is... a ritual," Isole murmured. The words seemed to lower the temperature in the room by ten degrees. "It is archaic. Dangerous. It does not heal. It forces a temporal reversion of the target's energetic state."

Vane didn't blink. "Explain."

"I can impose my Authority upon hers," Isole said her voice taking on a strange resonant quality. "I can force the life energy in her core to absolutely suppress the death energy for one full cycle of the sun. Twenty-four hours. She would be restored to her state prior to the corruption."

Hope flared in Vane's chest sharp and painful. "Do it."

"Listen to me," Isole said sharply cutting him off. "It is a dam made of glass. When the twenty-four hours expire the suppression ends instantly. The dead mana will not just return. It will rebound with catastrophic force. She will not fade Vane. She will crash. It will be agonizing and it will be quick."

She looked past him toward the cot.

"It is not a cure. It is buying one glorious day at the cost of a horrific end."

Vane turned back to the cot. Senna's eyes were open a slit. She had heard.

He walked over and knelt beside her taking her freezing hand.

"You heard the elf," Vane whispered. "One day. On your feet. But the bill comes due hard tomorrow night."

Senna's eyes cracked open further. The haze of approaching death cleared for a second replaced by the terrifying familiar spark of the general who hated losing.

Her lips moved. No sound came out. She swallowed forcing air through her ruined throat.

"Do it," she rasped. The sound was like tearing paper.

Vane squeezed her hand then stood up and turned to Isole.

"She is in. Start the clock."

An hour later the ward looked less like a hospital and more like a site of occult warfare.

Vane had pushed the other cots against the walls. Isole stood in the center of the cleared floor. Senna's wheelchair was positioned in front of her.

The High Elf looked terrifying. Her usual calm was gone replaced by intense sweating concentration. The air in the room was swirling with visible currents of magic. Vibrant emerald green and deep rotting crimson twisted around each other like warring snakes.

Authority: [Samsara]

"Hold her," Isole commanded her voice echoing strangely. "When the reversion hits her body will try to tear itself apart."

Vane stood behind the wheelchair clamping his hands onto Senna's shoulders bracing her against the chair back. She was limp and barely conscious.

Isole raised her hands and the swirling energies slammed into Senna's chest.

Senna didn't just scream. She roared.

It was a primal horrifying sound as five years of decay were violently ripped out of her system. Her body arched against Vane's grip with shocking strength her spine bowing. Vane dug his heels in holding on for dear life as the magic raged.

The black veins on her neck didn't just fade. They were aggressively scrubbed away vanishing under a wave of aggressive green light. The smell of ozone and burning mana filled the room thick enough to choke on.

It lasted for an eternity of thirty seconds. Then with a final thunderclap of displaced air the light vanished.

Isole staggered back collapsing onto one of the pushed-aside cots gasping for air blood streaming freely from both nostrils.

Vane let go of Senna's shoulders breathing hard his hands shaking.

The wheelchair was empty.

Vane looked up.

Standing in the center of the room bathed in the dim light of the single bulb was Senna Valerius.

She was not the wasted ghost he had known. She was tall towering over him. Her spine was a steel rod. The hospital gown was too small for her now stretched tight across broad powerful shoulders and back muscles that were defined and taut with healthy tension.

Her skin was pale but it glowed with furious vitality. The black veins were gone. Her chopped hair looked darker and thicker.

She stood perfectly still eyes closed taking a breath. It was deep full and silent. The breath of a predator waking up.

Slowly she opened her eyes. They were obsidian black clear and terrifyingly intense. The sheer pressure of her presence... the raw unfiltered aura of a Rank 6 Expert in her prime... hit Vane like a physical blow knocking the wind out of him.

She raised her hands staring at them. She clenched them into fists and the air popped around her knuckles.

She turned her head slowly fixing Vane with a look that made his Usurper instinct scream in panic. It wasn't affection. It was the ferocious hunger of a weapon that had been left to rust for too long.

She extended an open hand toward him.

"My spear rat," she commanded. Her voice was a resonant alto that shook the dust from the ceiling tiles. "Bring it to me."