Chapter : 719

The woman introduced herself as Sumaiya. The name was as elegant and exotic as she was, a string of soft syllables that felt out of place amidst the harsh, guttural sounds of the Lower Coil. She led him from the relative order of his street deeper into the slum’s tangled heart, a place where the alleys grew so narrow that the tenement buildings seemed to lean against each other for support, blotting out the last vestiges of the evening sky.

The air grew thicker, heavier. The smells intensified, layering one on top of the other—the acrid stench of the tanneries, the sour smell of unwashed bodies, the damp, earthy odor of the ever-present rot. Sounds echoed strangely in the claustrophobic space: a baby’s cry from a high window, the drunken laughter from a hidden tavern, the skittering of rats in the shadows. It was a descent into a man-made hell.

Lloyd, walking a half-step behind her, observed everything with the dispassionate eye of a soldier mapping hostile territory. He noted the dead-end alleys, the rickety wooden balconies that could serve as sniper perches, the flow of human traffic. The Major General was always on duty, his paranoia a constant, humming undercurrent beneath the calm facade of Doctor Zayn.

Sumaiya, however, seemed oblivious to her surroundings. She moved with a single-minded purpose, her focus absolute. Her earlier desperation had been banked, replaced by a tense, brittle control. She navigated the labyrinthine streets with a familiarity that surprised Lloyd. This was not her first time in the Coil. She knew its secret paths and its hidden dangers.

“You come here often?” Lloyd asked, his voice deliberately casual. The question was a probe, a small stone dropped into the deep well of her mystery.

She didn't look back. “I come where I am needed,” she replied, her voice flat. It was not an answer, but a deflection. A very skilled deflection. It confirmed his suspicion: she was more than she appeared.

He decided to try a different approach, appealing to the doctor’s role. “The boy’s symptoms. You said it was a wasting sickness. Can you be more specific? Fever? Cough? Rashes?”

This time, she hesitated. The brittle control wavered. “He… he is just weak,” she said, her voice softer now, tinged with a painful frustration. “It started a month ago. He was a lively child, always running, always laughing. Then he grew tired. The fever came next, a low, stubborn fire that never truly breaks. He stopped eating. Now… he barely moves. He breathes, but it’s like watching a candle flicker in the wind, about to be extinguished by the slightest breeze. The healers say his life-force is being drained, that a shadow has latched onto his soul.”

Lloyd processed the information. The symptoms were non-specific, which was why the local healers, with their reliance on visible signs and folk theories, were baffled. A wasting sickness could be anything from malnutrition to a slow-acting poison to an internal malignancy. Without his [All-Seeing Eye], he would be just as blind as they were.

“And the family?” he asked. “The weavers?”

“Good people,” Sumaiya said, a flicker of warmth entering her voice. “Honest. They work their fingers to the bone for a pittance. They adore their son. This sickness… it has destroyed them. They have sold everything they own for useless cures. Their loom is gone. Their hope is gone. Now, they just… wait.”

Her words painted a grim, familiar picture. It was the timeless tragedy of poverty, where a single illness could shatter an entire family, pulling them down into a spiral of debt and despair from which there was no escape.

He saw the depth of her empathy then. It wasn't pity. It was a shared pain, a furious anger at the injustice of it all. This enigmatic woman, who moved with the grace of a predator, possessed a core of fierce, protective compassion. It made her even more intriguing.

Finally, they stopped before a dilapidated tenement building that seemed to sag under the weight of its own misery. The front door hung from a single hinge. Sumaiya pushed it open, revealing a dark, narrow staircase that smelled of damp wood and despair.

“They are on the third floor,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if they were entering a sacred tomb.

They climbed in silence, the creak of the old wooden stairs the only sound. With each step, the feeling of hopelessness grew stronger. Lloyd could feel it as a tangible presence, a cold, heavy blanket that smothered the air.

The door to the apartment was ajar. A thin sliver of wavering lamplight spilled into the dark hallway. From within, he could hear the soft, rhythmic sound of a woman weeping.

Chapter : 720

Sumaiya paused, her hand hovering over the door. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. She turned to Lloyd, and in the dim light, he saw the raw vulnerability in her eyes again. “Please,” she whispered, the single word a prayer. “Whatever you can do.”

Lloyd gave a slow, deliberate nod. The compassionate mask of the doctor was firmly in place, but beneath it, the Major General prepared for battle. Sickness was an enemy, and he was here to wage war.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was small, bare, and suffocatingly hot. A single oil lamp on a rickety table cast flickering, monstrous shadows on the cracked plaster walls. In one corner, a man and a woman—the weavers—were huddled together, their faces pale and hollowed out by grief. On a thin straw mattress on the floor lay a small, still form, a child so frail he seemed more like a ghost than a living boy.

The air was thick with the cloying, sweet smell of sickness and the silent, screaming sound of a family’s breaking heart. Doctor Zayn had arrived.

---

The room was a shrine to poverty. Every surface was bare, stripped of any object that might hold value. The loom that had been the family’s livelihood was gone, leaving a large, empty space in the corner that felt like a fresh wound. The only furniture was the small, wobbly table holding the lamp and a single wooden stool. The parents, who looked up with hollow, haunted eyes as Lloyd and Sumaiya entered, were worn down to their very bones by grief and hardship.

The mother, a woman who might have been beautiful once but was now a gaunt specter of sorrow, made a small, choked sound. The father, a man with the strong, calloused hands of a weaver, simply stared, his face a mask of numb resignation.

Sumaiya went to them immediately, her movements now filled with a quiet, practiced tenderness. She knelt beside the mother, placing a hand on her shoulder and murmuring words of comfort too low for Lloyd to hear. She was their anchor in this storm of despair.

Lloyd, however, focused his attention on the true center of the tragedy: the child on the mattress. He moved across the room, his steps silent on the rough floorboards. As he approached, the cloying, sickly-sweet scent of advanced infection grew stronger. He knelt beside the boy, his mind a cold, clear engine of analysis, shutting out the overwhelming emotion in the room.

The boy, who couldn’t have been more than seven years old, was a fragile, bird-like creature. His skin was stretched tight over his small bones and had a waxy, translucent pallor. His cheeks were flushed with a fever that seemed to be consuming him from the inside out. His breathing was a shallow, ragged whisper, each inhalation a painful, stuttering effort. His eyes were closed, his small face peaceful in a way that was terrifyingly close to the stillness of death.

Lloyd felt a familiar, unwelcome pang in his chest. It was the same feeling he had experienced in the clinic, a flicker of genuine empathy that felt like a weakness. He ruthlessly suppressed it. Compassion was a luxury the Major General could not afford. The mission was to identify the enemy and neutralize it.

“May I?” he asked, his voice a soft murmur directed at the parents. He didn’t wait for an answer. He gently placed his fingers on the boy’s wrist, feeling for the faint, thready pulse. It was weak and rapid, a frantic little drum beating a rhythm of retreat.

This was the moment. The theater of the examination was complete. Under the guise of a traditional healer, he closed his eyes, as if in deep concentration. Internally, he opened his true one.

The command was silent, instantaneous. The [All-Seeing Eye] activated.

The grimy, lamp-lit room vanished, replaced by a universe of shimmering, biological data. The boy’s body became a luminous, three-dimensional construct of light and shadow. Lloyd’s perception plunged through the layers, peeling back skin, muscle, and bone with a thought.

He saw the heart, a small, valiant engine, fluttering erratically as it struggled to pump the sluggish, oxygen-starved blood. He saw the liver and spleen, both slightly enlarged, signs of a body’s systemic fight against a massive infection. He followed the branching network of nerves, the flow of energy, the very architecture of life. It was a magnificent, terrible, and beautiful sight.