Page 4 of Death’s Gentle Hand

“Wasn't a body,” Brinn insisted. “Was shaped like one, but wrong underneath. Like something wearing a person-suit that didn't quite fit.”

Damian began preparing his supplies for Paincraft, laying out the soul-needles. “What happened tonight?”

“Broke into Magistrate Voss's house. Easy job, supposed to be. But he was there, the shadow man. Waiting in the safe room like he knew I was coming. Didn't say nothing, just looked at me with those hole-eyes. Then the pain started.”

The wounds were unlike any Damian had ever felt. Too deep, too clean, cut by something sharper than any blade he’d encountered. They wept, carrying a chill that made his fingers go numb—a scent like winter mornings and old graves.

“This is going to hurt,” he warned, placing his hands on Brinn's shoulders.

He opened himself to the boy’s pain, letting it flood his veins like ice water. The familiar burn of torn flesh he expected—but beneath it lurked something ancient and alien, a chill that stole his breath and made his hands tremble.

Beneath the pain, that chill from the Baths flared—ancient, familiar, and all too present. Damian shivered, recalling the same sense of being watched from last night. Whatever haunted Brinn felt uncomfortably like what had begun haunting him.

Terror. Pure, primal terror, but not of death or pain. Terror of recognition, of being seen and known by something vast and patient and utterly alien. Terror of being chosen.

The sensation left Damian's hands numb and his chest tight. For a moment, he could swear he felt something looking back at him through Brinn's memories, something that knew his name and had been waiting for him to notice.

“There,” he said when the healing was done, his voice rougher than he'd intended. “You'll be sore for a few days, but no permanent damage.”

Brinn sat up slowly, shoulders tensing and relaxing as he tested their movement.

The tight, shaking breaths he’d been taking eased, and Damian could feel the change in the boy— a tremor of exhaustion replacing the edge of panic in his voice.

When Brinn spoke again, his words were softer, more uncertain.

“The shadow man,” he whispered, voice rough with fatigue.

“You believe me, don't you? You felt him too.”

Damian wanted to dismiss it as trauma or imagination, but something in the boy’s voice—and the wounds—made denial impossible. “Get some rest,” he said instead. “Stay away from Magistrate Voss's house.”

After Brinn left, Corrin questioned Damian about what he'd felt during the healing. The words came reluctantly, each one feeling like an admission of madness. The cold beneath the fear, the sense of being watched, the feeling that something had been looking back at him through Brinn's eyes.

“You think I'm losing my mind,” he said when he finished.

“I think you're tired,” Corrin replied carefully. “And I think this city is full of strange things that don't have rational explanations. Maybe we should be more careful.”

“Careful how?”

“Wards. Protections. Maybe talk to someone who knows about the old magic, the kind that predates the Time Exchange.”

Damian laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You want me to consult with Accord practitioners? That's a fast way to get us both Hollowed.”

“Better Hollowed than haunted.”

The word hung between them like a curse. Haunted. As if something dead was following him, interested in his work, drawn by his magic. It should have been ridiculous, but Damian found he couldn't dismiss the possibility entirely.

The rest of the day passed quietly, but the quiet felt wrong somehow.

Too deep, too intentional, like the city was holding its breath.

Patients came and went, their usual litany of complaints and desperate needs, but even they seemed subdued.

People spoke in whispers, glanced over their shoulders, jumped at shadows that might not have been empty.

By evening, Damian's accumulated pain was becoming unbearable. The borrowed agony from his patients, the strange cold from Brinn's wounds, the constant ache of magical exhaustion. He needed relief, needed to wash the hurt from his bones before it consumed him entirely.

The Lament Baths were his refuge, the one place in Varos where suffering was acknowledged as sacred rather than shameful.

The natural hot springs bubbled up from deep beneath the city, heated by the same mysterious forces that kept the steam vents running.

The water was mineral-rich and healing, but more than that, it was a place where grief was ritual and tears were offerings.

Damian made his way through the narrow tunnels that led to the baths, following the sound of dripping water and the scent of sulfur and salt. The passages were carved from living rock, worn smooth by centuries of desperate pilgrims seeking relief from pain too large for one soul to carry.

The main pool could hold fifty, but tonight only a dozen floated in the healing waters. Their weeping mingled with the bubbling springs. Here, sorrow was honored—allowed to exist without apology.

Damian undressed slowly, folding his clothes with the careful precision of someone who owned very little.

The air was warm and humid, thick with steam that carried the mineral taste of deep earth.

He lowered himself into the water inch by inch, feeling the heat draw pain from his bones like a gentle interrogation.

The relief was immediate and overwhelming.

The borrowed agonies of his patients dissolved in the warm water, carried away by currents that seemed to know exactly what hurt and why.

Damian floated on his back, letting the minerals sting his various small wounds while the heat unknotted muscles he'd forgotten were tense.

He allowed himself to remember being bathed as a child, his mother's hands shaking with exhaustion from illegal magic, her voice humming protective charms that she claimed would keep him safe from the Time Exchange's attention.

The memory should have been painful, but here in the healing waters, it felt like absolution.

A woman entered the pool nearby, moving with the deliberate slowness of someone who had made a final decision. Damian could hear her quiet weeping, the particular sound of someone saying goodbye to a world that had given them more pain than they could carry.

She waded deeper into the water, her breathing becoming more labored as the minerals worked their way into her lungs. No one intervened. This was part of the baths' sacred function, a place where the choice to leave could be made with dignity and witnessed with respect.

Damian felt the exact moment death touched her. A coldness spread through the water like spilled wine, not unpleasant but unmistakable. The woman's weeping stopped, her breathing ceased, and something fundamental shifted in the quality of the silence around them.

But the cold didn't dissipate when her body was respectfully removed by the bath attendants. If anything, it grew stronger, more focused, as if her death had opened a door that was now being held ajar. Damian found himself shaking uncontrollably, his skin cold despite the hot water.

For the first time in his life, he felt actively watched. Not by human eyes, but by something vast and patient and deeply interested in his response to mortality. The sensation was intimate and terrifying, like being studied by a surgeon who was deciding where to make the first cut.

He left the baths early, his skin still burning from the minerals, unable to shake the feeling that something had followed him out of the water.

The walk home felt different, as if he was moving through a world that had subtly rearranged itself while he wasn't looking.

Every shadow seemed deeper, every silence more profound.

The city's familiar sounds felt muffled, as if he was hearing them through thick glass.

By the time he reached his clinic, Damian was convinced he was losing his mind.

Exhaustion and magical strain could cause all kinds of perceptual distortions.

The sense of being watched, the coldness in the water, the feeling that something vast was paying attention to his small life—all of it could be explained by fatigue and stress.

But when he reached his threshold, rational explanations became harder to maintain.

A time-sigil was burned into the wooden doorframe, still warm and radiating the acrid stink of official magic.

Its complex lines thrummed with a command so absolute it made Damian’s teeth ache just to be near it.

A warning from the Time Exchange Authority that he was being watched, that his activities had attracted official attention.

Damian traced the sigil with his fingertips, feeling the way the magic bit at his skin like angry wasps.

The Time Exchange didn't give second warnings.

Next came arrest, trial, and Hollowing. The systematic destruction of everything that made him human, leaving only a shambling remnant that could serve as an example to others.

“Shit.” Corrin's voice behind him carried equal parts anger and fear. “When did this appear?”

“Must have been while I was at the baths.” Damian pulled his hand away from the sigil, his fingertips numb from contact with state magic. “They're not being subtle anymore.”

“We need to relocate. Tonight. Pack what you can carry and burn the rest.”

“No.” The word came out harder than Damian had intended. “I'm not abandoning my patients.”

“Your patients will be dead if you're Hollowed,” Corrin snapped. “And so will you. Is that really better than temporary relocation?”

“Temporary?” Damian laughed bitterly. “Once the Exchange marks you, the mark doesn't fade. Running just means dying tired.”

Their argument was interrupted by the sound of something scratching at the protective ward around the clinic. Not the desperate scrabbling of a person in need, but the methodical, patient sound of something testing boundaries.

The Hollow from the previous night had returned, but this time it approached the clinic directly.

Damian could hear it pressing against the magical barrier, creating sparks that smelled like burnt copper and old graves.

Instead of the usual wordless moaning that characterized the Hollowed, this one was making a different sound: the careful scrape of fingernails against stone.

“What's it doing?” Corrin whispered.

Damian listened to the rhythm of the scratching, trying to decode its pattern. Three long scrapes, two short, four long. Over and over, with the patience of something that had all the time in the world.

“Carving,” he realized. “It's carving something into the wall.”

The scratching stopped abruptly, followed by the sound of footsteps retreating into the night. Damian waited until he was sure the Hollow had gone before investigating.

His fingers found the fresh marks in the stone, deep gouges that were still warm from the friction of creation.

The symbol was complex, circular, made up of interlocking spirals and sharp-edged runes that seemed to pulse with residual heat.

When he traced its outline, the marks grew brighter, responding to his touch with an intimacy that made his breath catch.

“Do you recognize it?” Corrin asked.

Damian nodded slowly, his throat tight with memory and fear. “It's identical to a mark that appeared on my mother's hand the night she died. A soulbinding sigil.”

The implications hung between them like a curse.

Soulbinding was the most forbidden of all magics, the practice that had gotten his mother killed and cost him his sight.

It created a connection between souls that transcended death, allowing one person to channel their life force into protective spells for another.

But soulbinding required two willing participants, a giver and a receiver. His mother had died trying to protect him, but what if her spell hadn't failed? What if it had simply been waiting for the right moment to complete itself?

“Damian,” Corrin said carefully, “if your mother's spell is still active, if it's been looking for a way to finish what she started...”

“Then I'm in more trouble than just time-debt,” he finished.

That night, Damian lay in his narrow bed and stared at the ceiling he couldn't see. The symbol outside his door pulsed with steady warmth, and every few minutes he found himself getting up to touch it, feeling the way it responded to his presence like a living thing.

He ran his fingers over the carved mark, unable to explain why he needed the contact. The symbol was warm, nearly body temperature, and seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. When he was distressed, the warmth intensified; when he was calm, it faded to a gentle hum.

Sleep, when it finally came, brought dreams not of the empty quiet that usually haunted him, but a silence so thick it felt like velvet pressed against his ears. Within it, something vast and patient moved closer, breath by breath.

In the deepest part of his sleep, Damian heard something that wasn't quite a voice, wasn't quite a whisper, but carried the weight of absolute certainty: “Soon.”

He woke with the word echoing in his mind and frost covering his windows despite the warm night.

Outside, a raven sat on his windowsill, watching him with eyes that reflected no light.

When he opened the window, the bird didn't flee.

Instead, it cocked its head and studied him with an intelligence that seemed distinctly non-animal.

“Soon,” the raven said, its voice like wind through gravestones. Damian knew then that something fundamental had changed. The waiting was almost over.

Whatever had been listening for his call was finally ready to answer.