Chapter 19. Discovering New Powers

Greyfall's healer lived near the northern wall, apart from the rest of the town, in a leaning house that smelled of herbs and something sour. His name was Orvin—a stooped, sallow old man with perpetually weary eyes and fingers permanently stained by medicines. I brought Finn to him, supporting the boy on his uninjured side, while Dorn limped behind us.

Orvin regarded the three of us without enthusiasm.

“Seekers again,” he grumbled, pointing Finn toward a bench. “And damaged again. Sit down, boy. Let me see.”

He unwound my rough bandage and examined Finn's forearm, then clicked his tongue.

“Bad. Deep. I can still mend this, I think—but the silver goes on the table first, where I can see it.” He straightened and folded his hands. “I don't work for promises. Half the frontier already owes me money. Silver first, healing second.”

I placed several heavy coins on the table. Orvin glanced at them to make certain they were silver rather than copper. Only then did he lean over Finn's arm.

What happened next was unlike anything I had seen in this world.

Orvin placed both palms above the injury, closed his eyes, and light flowed from his hands.

Green light. Not bright, but faint and uneven, like the first grass pushing through old snow. It gathered around Finn's arm, and beneath it, the impossible began. The injury slowly closed. Not at once and not easily; the old man worked as though he were pulling a heavy cart uphill. Sweat appeared on his brow. The color drained from his face, and his breathing grew rough. Whatever he was doing demanded a great deal from him.

I watched without moving.

Until that moment, I had never known whether magic truly existed here. I had assumed it might. A world with monsters, dungeons, and a System before my eyes ought to have magic somewhere within it, if old stories were any guide. Yet during all my weeks in Greyfall, I had seen only blades and ordinary fire. Brenna, Hald, Kess, and Dorn had never summoned flame from an empty palm or mended an injury with light. I had almost decided that magic did not exist at all.

And there it was before me—dim, green, flowing from the hands of a tired old healer.

By habit, I directed Analysis at Orvin as I did with every new person. Beside the familiar lines, another appeared, one I had never seen before.

Healing Magic · Low Rank

A chill ran down my spine.

So that was its name. The System had a word for the green light—magic—and it had a rank. Low. If there was a low rank, higher ones had to exist. Beyond this thin stream of light waited an entire staircase I had never known was there.

I looked again at the glow moving from Orvin's hands.

It was energy, only in a form I had not encountered before.

I already knew two forms. The first was frozen and locked inside crystal: the sparks I gathered from creatures and carried to Kess, the same force sleeping within the crimson hearts of dungeons. The second was raw and physical, transformed into strength and speed within my body whenever I loosened the leash. Now I saw a third form: living energy, fluid and obedient to will, flowing from an old man's palms and turning itself into healing.

One force in three different shapes. Spark, fist, green light. A creature left it behind as crystal. I drove it through my body without truly understanding what I was doing. Orvin could shape it into something I could not.

The third form was flexible, subtle, directed by intent—and entirely beyond me.

Orvin withdrew his hands. The light vanished. The old man swayed, braced himself against the table, and remained there for a long moment, gray with exhaustion and breathing as though he had run a mile.

Finn's injury had closed. A rough pink scar remained, but his arm was whole. He moved his fingers cautiously, then gasped with joy and disbelief.

“They move! It works! I thought I'd lose the use of them.”

“You won't,” Orvin muttered, wiping his forehead. “The scar will stay, and it won't be pretty. I'm not one of those masters who can leave skin untouched. I do what I can. Be grateful I managed this much.” He glanced at me and at the silver on the table. “Anything worse is beyond me. Bone, poison, injuries inside the body—that requires a true healer. True healers don't come here.”

He swept the silver into his hand with weary bitterness.

“Go. I need sleep. That arm has taken the rest of my day.”

I wanted to ask questions. A dozen of them pressed at my throat. What was the force? Who could wield it? Could it be learned? Where had he found it within himself?

I held my tongue. Orvin was a stranger, and it would have been foolish for a Bronze Seeker who cleared deep dungeons to reveal how little he understood about the world. Every unnecessary question gave someone another thread to pull. Too many people were watching me already.

I nodded, helped Finn to his feet, and left. I saved the questions for the man I trusted.

I found Dorn outside the little room he kept beside the tavern. I sent Finn home to his mother with orders to return in the morning. The boy walked away looking back every few paces, still stunned by the simple fact that he was alive and whole.

Then I sat beside the old man on the threshold and asked the question that had been burning inside me.

“That green force Orvin used. What was it?”

“Magic,” Dorn said with a shrug, as though I had asked why rain fell. “Sorcery. Have you never seen magic before?” He grunted at his own question. “Of course you haven't. Orvin's the only one in Greyfall, and until today, you'd never needed a healer.”

“One in the entire town?”

“One. And not a particularly good one.” Dorn lowered his voice despite the empty street. “He's a healer by the narrowest measure. He can close a small injury, drain an infection, mend certain bones if fortune favors him. Real mages don't settle in holes like ours. Large cities offer honor and gold. Once a year, perhaps, one passes through Greyfall, but none stay. So I haven't seen enough of them to pretend I know everything.”

“Are there different kinds of mages?” I asked.

“Certainly.” Dorn scratched his beard, searching his memory. “They bend power in different directions. Some attack with it—fire, ice, lightning, each according to an affinity. Those are valuable in the Verge. Put one at your back, and a dungeon becomes half as difficult. Others use power to strengthen themselves or their companions: harder blows, better protection, quicker movement for the length of a fight. Any team would pay well for one of those. Then there are healers like Orvin, only true healers can mend far more and draw poison out of a body.”

He spread his hands.

“That's all I can tell you, boy. I don't know the finer points. I'm a sword, not a book. If you want to learn where their power comes from or how they master it, ask scholars in Korvengard. They say there are schools there that train mages. That kind of luxury doesn't belong to places like Greyfall.”

There it was again. It doesn't belong to places like Greyfall. Just like gold. Just like so many of the things waiting farther along the road I needed to travel.

That night, I lay awake for a long time.

I stared through a dark gap between the shed's boards, where the pale, broken moon shone, and turned what I had witnessed over in my mind. An entire hidden layer of the world had opened before me in a single afternoon, and every path through it led to the same thing.

Power. The same energy I had recognized in the green light from Orvin's hands.

Fire, ice, lightning. Enhancement—stronger limbs, tougher protection, greater speed. Healing. They were different forms people had learned to give the same force: the force that hardened into sparks, hummed inside dungeon hearts, and moved within me. Orvin shaped his narrow stream into green light, and doing so consumed the strength of his entire day.

How much of that energy was inside me?

I did not know. I sent it through my body whenever I fought, without understanding the process, directing it into the single crude shape I knew. The frail old man held only a thread of power—small, but trained and flexible. Inside me was a current whose depth I had never found, yet all I knew how to make it do was strike.

Then a thought came to me with such force that I sat upright in the hay.

What if striking was not all I could do?

What if my strength—reckless, vast, still largely unknown—could be shaped as a mage shaped his own? Not only into force, but into flame, ice, enhancement, perhaps even healing. What if the sword was merely the beginning, the first road Dorn had been able to show me? What if another entire road had gone untouched because I had never known it existed?

In the darkness, I raised my palm before my face. I focused as I did when loosening the leash, but this time I did not prepare to strike. I tried simply to let the energy answer—to move outward rather than into motion.

Nothing visible happened. My palm remained dark and warm. The force inside me stirred, then settled again, directionless without its familiar path. I did not know how to shape it. Of course I did not. No one had taught me, and I did not yet understand the first principle.

Yet something faint trembled at the very edge of perception.

An answer, no more than the touch of a finger against an undrawn bowstring.

Cold symbols formed above my open palm.

New Perception Unlocked: Energy Sense I
Detected response: internal
External shaping unavailable

The message vanished almost at once, but the faint pressure remained. I reached for it again and felt the same distant tremor—weak, elusive, undeniably real.

The System had not opened the road for me. It had only confirmed that the road existed.

I could sense the force now, barely. I still could not command it, shape it, or bring it beyond my skin. But unavailable did not mean impossible. Analysis had taught me that much. Every locked line was also a promise that something waited on the other side.

I lowered my hand. My heart was beating fast.

The blade was one road to power. Dorn guided me along it, and I was advancing quickly. But now I knew there were others. Beyond the wall of steel and monsters stood an entire world of schools, affinities, and disciplines through which people shaped the same energy already living within me—only in me, there seemed to be more of it than I knew how to measure.

Every one of those roads led in the same direction.

Upward. Deeper. Away from Greyfall, toward the great cities and whatever waited beyond them.

Home.

I closed my eyes. Tomorrow, I would need to find a beginning. Not with Orvin; he knew little beyond his narrow gift. But somewhere in this world were people who understood.

Sooner or later, I would reach them.

There were more roads now.

Which meant I was closer.