Scene I – The Court of Veins
The throne room shimmered with ceremonial gold — saints carved into the walls, their eyes blind with dust.
The nobles had gathered in a crescent, draped in perfume and hypocrisy.
At the center stood Ace Valemont, his coat of black leather immaculate, a single silver scalpel glinting against his chest like an unspoken threat.
A servant rolled in a covered stretcher. Beneath the linen lay a young noblewoman, her skin mottled blue, breath shallow.
The plague — his plague — had found its way into the upper ranks. The irony was almost holy.
King Aldren leaned forward on his throne.
"Doctor Valemont. You will show us the proof of your art. If you fail, your title — and your head — will be forfeit."
Ace bowed with perfect calm.
"Then let us pray the gods favor precision over prayer."
He peeled back the linen. Gasps rippled through the hall. The woman's eyes were open, milky and unblinking.
Ace turned to the assembled clergy and nobles.
"Observe. This is what faith cannot heal — but knowledge might."
He drew a line of silver dust across her chest, murmuring the incantation not of holy words but of measurement: numbers, ratios, formulas.
To the audience, it sounded like sorcery. To Ace, it was anatomy.
Then — the first breath.
The corpse convulsed, ribs rising once, twice, before falling still again.
The nobles cried out; the priests crossed themselves.
Ace did not move. He placed his gloved hand over her heart — and slowly, impossibly, the faintest pulse began to beat beneath his fingers.
He turned to the King.
"Your Majesty, she will live another day. Perhaps two. Long enough for the world to learn that even death has rules — if one dares to rewrite them."
A stunned silence fell. Then, the clapping began — hesitant at first, then swelling into thunder.
They called it a miracle.
Ace called it proof.
But when he caught Lyra's eyes across the room, she wasn't clapping.
She was watching.
Not horrified. Not awed.
Just watching, as if trying to see the man beneath the scalpel.
He bowed again, mask firmly in place.
"May the gods bless the experiment."
Scene II – Lyra's Reflections
That night, Lyra wrote by candlelight, her hand trembling from the effort of holding a quill.
Outside, the storm had broken; the world smelled of rain and smoke.
Her journal bore the royal crest — a relic of her education, a place meant for prayers.
Tonight, she filled it with something else.
"He does not kneel when others pray."
"They call him cruel, but I saw no joy in the cruelty — only hunger. A mind that devours everything, even mercy."
"When he looked at me, I felt as though he saw through the skin — not as a man sees a woman, but as a surgeon sees the heart beating beneath. It should have frightened me. It did not."
She paused, the candle sputtering.
"Perhaps that is why he is dangerous. Not because he kills without remorse, but because he reminds us what we are without faith — anatomy pretending to be divine."
The ink blotched as she hesitated over one final line.
"If I am to be cured by him, will I still be myself?"
She closed the book and blew out the candle.
In the dark, the sound of thunder rolled across the city — and somewhere beyond the palace walls, Ace Valemont was already preparing his next experiment.