Sephis Corruption

Back at the clinic, I tried to shake off the encounter by focusing on something normal. Cooking seemed like a good choice.

"What are you making?" Kaguya asked, watching me pull ingredients from the pantry. She'd closed her notebook for once, giving me her full attention.

"Comfort food," I said, laying out flour, eggs, and the last of our good oil. "Noodles from scratch. Sometimes you need something that requires focus and produces something warm and filling."

"Can I help?" Reika asked, surprising all of us.

"I want to help too," Kaguya said quickly. "I mean, I can measure things. Precisely. Cooking is just chemistry, right?"

"You want to cook?" Karin asked, skeptical. "You, who once tried to improve bread by adding experimental compounds?"

"That was research," Kaguya protested, blushing. "And the bread was perfectly edible. Eventually."

I handed aprons to both of them. "First lesson: cooking is chemistry. Precise measurements, proper timing, understanding how ingredients interact. Think of it as alchemy that you can eat."

"That actually makes sense," Reika said, tying her apron with military precision.

Kaguya beamed. "See? I knew there was a scientific basis for it."

We spent the next hour working the dough, with Kaguya carefully measuring everything twice and taking notes on texture changes. She kept asking questions about gluten formation and protein structures, approaching cooking like any other research project. The repetitive motions were soothing, and I found myself relaxing for the first time since waking up to a smoldering pillow.

"Why is cooking important to you?" Reika asked as she struggled with the rolling pin.

"It's creation instead of destruction," I said, helping her get the dough to the right thickness. "In my old world, I spent most of my time in hospitals. Sickness, death, people at their worst moments. Cooking is the opposite. You take simple ingredients and make something that nourishes people, brings them together."

"Plus he's good at it," Karin added, "which is more than I can say for the rest of us."

"Cooking is just another form of medicine," I continued, dropping the noodles into boiling water. "Good food helps people heal, gives them strength, makes them happy. Sometimes that's as important as any treatment."

Reika nodded thoughtfully. "My mother used to say that. Before the plague took her."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the kitchen.

"Tell me about her," I said gently.

"She was a baker," Reika said, watching the noodles dance in the boiling water. "Made the most incredible bread. The whole neighborhood would line up outside our shop every morning. She said bread was hope you could hold in your hands."

"She sounds wise."

"She was. She taught me that feeding people was a form of love." Reika's voice was soft, distant. "I forgot that for a long time. After she died, I focused so much on fighting the plague that I stopped thinking about what we were really fighting for."

I ladled the noodles into bowls, adding a simple sauce made from the last of our tomatoes and herbs. "Here. Hope you can hold in your hands."

Reika took a bite, her eyes closing. For a moment, her usual stern expression melted away entirely.

"It's good," she said quietly. "Really good."

"Food always tastes better when you help make it," I said.

We ate in companionable silence, the earlier tension from the Executors' visit fading into something warmer. This was what I'd missed in all the chaos of new powers and political maneuvering: simple moments of connection over shared meals.

A sharp knock interrupted our lunch.

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The woman at the door was barely standing. Middle-aged, well-dressed but disheveled, with the pallor of someone who'd been sick for weeks. She leaned heavily against the doorframe, breathing shallow and labored.

"Please," she gasped. "You're the healer, aren't you? The one with the light?"

"I'm Ken," I said, helping her to a chair. "What's wrong?"

"My name is Elena. I've been coughing for three weeks. The guild doctors tried everything. Fire therapy, bloodletting, herbal treatments. Nothing works." She coughed, bringing up flecks of blood. "My husband heard about what you did for Baron Wilhelm. He said you could cure anything."

I examined her quickly. The cough was deep, wet, probably pneumonia that had been made worse by the guild's treatments. Her fever was high, her breathing shallow. Without modern antibiotics, she'd likely die within days.

"Let me see what I can do," I said, placing my hands gently on her chest.

Light flowed from my fingers, but something was wrong. Instead of the usual warm, healing energy, I felt resistance. The light pushed against something dark and writhing in her lungs.

"Ken?" Kaguya said, noticing my frown. "What is it?"

"There's something else here," I said, concentrating harder. "Not just pneumonia. Something... artificial."

I increased the flow of light, pushing deeper. Elena gasped as radiance flowed through her chest, and suddenly I could see it clearly. Tiny crystalline structures embedded in her lung tissue, growing like living tumors.

"Sephis corruption," I breathed. "But it's old. Dormant. The pneumonia must have weakened her immune system enough for it to activate."

This was beyond anything I'd encountered before. Not active plague corruption, but ancient infection that had been hiding in her body for years. The guild's treatments had missed it entirely because they were looking for active Sephis influence.

I gathered more light, shaping it carefully. Instead of the broad healing energy I usually channeled, I needed something precise, surgical. The light formed into thin tendrils that sought out each crystalline growth, burning them away without damaging the healthy tissue around them.

Elena convulsed as the corruption died, her body purging years of accumulated infection. Blood and black ichor came up with her coughing, but her breathing was already beginning to ease.

"How do you feel?" I asked after the light faded.

She took a deep breath, the first full breath she'd managed in weeks. "Like I can breathe again. Like I'm alive again." Tears streamed down her face. "How is this possible?"

"Sometimes healing means finding problems no one else knew to look for," I said. "The guild was treating your symptoms, but they missed the underlying cause."

"The dormant corruption," Kaguya said, already scribbling notes. "How many people might be carrying something similar? Old infections that never fully cleared?"

I thought about the implications. If dormant Sephis corruption was more common than anyone realized, hiding in people who seemed healthy until their immune systems weakened...

"We need to develop a screening method," I said. "A way to detect this before it becomes active."

"Can you do that?" Reika asked.

I held up my hand, watching light dance between my fingers. "I think so. But we'll need to be systematic about it. Test people who seem healthy, look for patterns."

Elena stood up, moving with more strength than she'd shown since arriving. "Thank you. I don't know how to repay this."

"Don't repay me," I said. "Tell people. Spread the word that some illnesses need deeper investigation. The guild's methods work for active corruption, but they miss things like this."

After she left, we sat in the kitchen, processing what had just happened.

"That was different from Baron Wilhelm," Kaguya observed. "More complex. The light responded to your intent, shaped itself to what you needed."

"It's learning," I realized. "Or I'm learning to use it better. The more I understand what needs healing, the more precisely I can apply the power."

"Which is exactly what those Executors are worried about," Reika pointed out. "Power that grows and adapts."

I nodded grimly. Every success, every new application of my abilities, was also evidence that I was becoming something beyond human limits. The question was whether that transformation would ultimately help or harm the people I was trying to save.

"One case at a time," I said finally. "We help who we can, document what we learn, and hope that's enough."

Outside, the afternoon sun was setting over the city, painting the dome's wards in shades of gold and amber. Somewhere out there, people were suffering from problems the guild couldn't solve, carrying infections no one knew to look for.

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