CHAPTER 337: 337: SUCKING THE VENOM

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He went in low and to the left where the coil was about to return. His right hand closed on the thick muscle beneath the jaw hinge. His left hand struck the triangle between skull and first vertebra. He felt the shock of the blow climb the bones of his forearm. He slid inside the second strike so it wasted itself in the air. He twisted his right wrist. The mouth opened on reflex. His knee came up. The body folded. Three movements. The coil slackened. The head hit the earth and rolled once, then lay quiet. The body thumped along the ground in a slow surrender and went still.

Ikea’s branch fell from her hands. She made a sound behind her teeth. He turned. She was still on her feet. She was still reading. She was already losing the thread.

"The thigh," she said through her teeth. "It bit my thigh."

She showed him without shame. He saw punctures. He saw flesh beginning to discolor in a ring. He saw the pattern of the bruise spreading. He saw the tremor at the corner of her mouth where Will held a line against pain. He reached for his storage, found nothing he trusted for venom, and in that breath the wrong memory from another world offered itself.

On Earth they had told boys in small towns to suck the poison out.

He almost bent. He almost put his mouth to the skin.

The System snapped him across the mind with a cold palm.

[Ding! System Notification: Medical advisory. Do not suck venom. Ineffective and dangerous. Use pressure immobilization and Essence Eater for toxin draw. The host possesses compatible skills.]

Kai exhaled a single measured breath. He set his jaw. "I will help you," he said, and let his voice be iron because she needed to hear iron. "Do not move."

He tore a strip from the hem of his own shirt and wrapped it around her thigh above the bite with steady hands, firm enough to slow the spread in the tissue under the skin, not so tight that blood itself would be trapped to die. He slid two fingers under the band to check the pressure and nodded. He knelt, set his left palm a hand’s breadth above the bite, and laid two fingers of his right hand over the punctures, not touching hard, only enough to make contact where contact could carry aura.

"Look at me," he said. "Breathe when I breathe."

She locked onto his eyes. She matched his breath. It steadied. The tremor paused as if listening.

He called his ultimate not as a weapon but as a tool. Essence Eater did not always need to feed. Sometimes it needed to be invited. He shaped his aura into a low steady pull, the way you draw smoke through a narrow flue so it will not pool and choke a room. A dark thread answered under his fingertips. It crawled toward the surface. He guided it. He felt it fight, then give, then come. It was a taste in his mouth that was not a taste, a sensation like hot copper without any metal present. He took it into himself and bled it into the ground through his other hand, letting the earth swallow what he refused to keep.

Ikea’s jaw unclenched a fraction. The black at the edges of the bite stopped advancing and then retreated half a finger’s width. Sweat curled along her hairline. Her breath deepened again.

"It is working," she whispered.

"It is working," he agreed without looking away from the work.

He drew the venom in pulses and spilled it into the soil until the stain lost its hunger. He did not take it all. He took enough that her body could do the rest. He released the skill, felt the emptiness where it had been, and let his normal warmth fill that space again.

"Pain will bite you again, maybe in an hour," he said. "It is the body’s way of telling you it is not finished. We will crush needle tea and keep you warm."

She stared at him for a heartbeat as if he had risen out of the ground like a tree and spoke with the tree’s old patience. Then her eyes moved to the flattened snake. She swallowed once. "I owe you," she said simply. "I will repay your kindness."

"Repay it by not dying," he said, rising. "Repay it by learning not to be bitten twice by the same mouth."

She tried to laugh and winced. He supported her elbow and helped her to the mat she had mate with leaf. The sight of the thing she had made with her own hands steadied her more than anything he could have said. He crushed a herb in his palm, dropped them into water in a stone cup, and set the cup into the nest of coals. The scent rose green and sharp. He gave it to her when it had cooled enough to drink.

"You should rest," he said.

She held the cup and did not drink yet. Her eyes found his mouth and stayed there. He knew why. His focus had put him very close to her skin. His breath had warmed the place where fear had made her cold. There is a moment after danger when the body looks for proof that it is still alive. The proof it prefers is heat.

He did not step back. He did not step forward. He let the moment make itself and then tried, for both their sakes, to make it smaller.

"I almost did a foolish thing," he said. "There is an old idea that tells everyone to use their mouths against snake bites. It does not work. It would have put both of us in danger. I put my mouth in a place that I shouldn’t..."

Her eyes widened a shade, then softened. "You did not do the foolish thing," she said. "You did the right thing. You saved me."