Chapter : 743

The minutes stretched into an eternity. The only sounds in the room were the ragged breathing of the child and the silent, frantic prayers of the four adults watching over him. Nothing happened. The boy remained still, his condition unchanged. A heavy, suffocating blanket of despair began to settle over the room again. The miracle had failed.

And then, a single, shuddering cough wracked the boy’s small frame.

It was a small sound, but in the crushing silence, it was as loud as a thunderclap. Another cough followed, this one stronger, deeper. He coughed again, and this time, a small amount of dark, viscous fluid dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

Lloyd, using his diagnostic vision, saw it happening. The medicine was a bomb that had detonated within the boy’s system. The golden light of the Fern was a cleansing fire, a wave of antibacterial energy that was systematically annihilating the emerald-green bacteria in his lungs. The silvery light of the Orchid was a tidal wave of spiritual energy, flooding his depleted immune system, super-charging it, giving it the strength to fight back. The fluid was being broken down, purged.

The boy’s breathing, which had been so shallow, began to deepen. It was still ragged, still a struggle, but it was real. Each breath was drawing in more air, pushing out more of the poison. The feverish flush on his cheeks began to recede, replaced by a healthier, more natural color.

After what felt like a lifetime, the boy’s eyelids fluttered. They opened, slowly, hesitantly. His gaze was unfocused at first, cloudy with sickness. Then, his eyes found his mother’s face, and a flicker of recognition, a spark of his old self, returned.

“Mama?” he whispered, his voice a tiny, fragile thread of sound.

The weaver’s wife let out a sob, a sound of such pure, overwhelming relief and joy that it seemed to shake the very foundations of the miserable hovel. She gathered her son into her arms, burying her face in his hair, her tears of grief transformed into tears of cathartic, disbelieving joy. Harun knelt beside them, his own face streaked with tears, his hand resting on his son’s back, feeling the miracle of his steady, strengthening breaths.

Lloyd and Sumaiya stood back, silent witnesses to the sacred, private moment of a family being reborn from the ashes of despair. The cure had worked. The Saint of the Coil had performed his greatest miracle yet.

---

The dawn that broke over the city of Rizvan the next morning felt different. For the weavers, Harun and Aliza, it was the first dawn in a month that was not shrouded in the gray fog of impending death. Their son was sleeping, a deep, natural, healing sleep. His fever was gone, his breathing was even, and the color had returned to his cheeks. The miracle was real. Their world, which had shrunk to the four walls of their miserable room, had been given back to them.

Lloyd and Sumaiya had left them in the early hours of the morning, slipping away as quietly as they had arrived. They walked back through the waking streets of the Lower Coil, the familiar smells and sounds of the slum now seeming less oppressive, less hopeless. They had stared into the abyss, and they had won.

When they reached the clinic, the first pale light of morning was spilling over the rooftops. They were both caked in the grime of the road and the jungle, their clothes torn, their bodies aching with a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. But as they stood before the door of the small, humble clinic, they shared a look—a look of quiet, shared triumph.

“You should get some rest,” Sumaiya said, her voice soft. “Your wounds…”

“They will heal,” he replied. “But first, a bath. I think I have earned a bath.”

A genuine, beautiful smile lit up her face, a rare and precious thing. “That, you have, Doctor. That, you most certainly have.”

The days that followed settled into a new, comfortable rhythm. The shared crucible of the Dahaka Jungle had burned away all pretense, all suspicion. In its place was a solid, unshakeable foundation of trust. Lloyd had proven himself to be a man of his word, a protector of impossible power and courage. Sumaiya had proven herself to be a companion of unyielding will and quiet competence. They had been tested, and they had not been found wanting.

Chapter : 744

Sumaiya did not leave. She simply… stayed. She became a fixture at the clinic, arriving every morning just as Lloyd was opening the doors and staying until the last patient had been seen in the evening. She never asked for payment, and he never offered. Her presence became an unspoken, accepted fact. She was now part of the clinic, as essential as his medical texts or his grinding stone.

Their partnership was a thing of beautiful, silent efficiency. Lloyd, with his miraculous diagnostic abilities, would see the patients, his mind instantly identifying the root cause of their ailments. He would then explain the diagnosis and the required treatment in his calm, reassuring manner.

Sumaiya would take over from there. She became the clinic’s apothecary, its nurse, and its administrator all in one. She learned the properties of the common herbs with a startling speed, her sharp mind absorbing the information effortlessly. She would mix the salves, grind the powders, and brew the tonics with a meticulous, careful hand. She had a natural, gentle touch with the patients, her innate compassion a perfect complement to his clinical detachment. She would clean and bandage wounds, her presence a soothing balm to the frightened and the hurting. She also managed the ever-growing line of people, her quiet authority bringing a sense of order to the daily chaos.

They rarely needed to speak. A glance, a nod, a simple gesture was enough. He would diagnose a gut parasite, and she would already be reaching for the bitter-root. He would identify an infected wound, and she would have the antiseptic and clean bandages ready before he had even finished speaking. They were two halves of a single healing will, their minds and purposes perfectly in sync.

The people of the Lower Coil accepted her presence as they had accepted his. She was the Saint’s quiet, beautiful shadow, the gentle hand that administered his miraculous cures. Their partnership elevated the clinic from a simple healer’s shop to something more, a true sanctuary of hope in the heart of the slum.

In the quiet moments, between the endless parade of sickness and injury, their own relationship deepened. They would share a simple meal of bread and cheese at the end of the day, sitting in the lamplight, the smells of the clinic a familiar perfume around them. They would talk, not of the horrors of the jungle or the mysteries of their pasts, but of the small, human dramas they had witnessed that day. The young mother whose baby finally stopped crying, the old man who could walk without his cane for the first time in years.

Lloyd found himself opening up in ways he never had before, not even with his own family. He shared snippets of his “past,” carefully edited stories from his life as KM Evan, reframed as the experiences of the warrior-turned-healer, Zayn. He spoke of the futility of war, of the simple, profound satisfaction of building instead of destroying.

Sumaiya, in turn, remained a beautiful, frustrating enigma. She listened with an intense, empathetic focus, but she offered little of her own story. Yet, in her eyes, in the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn't watching, he saw a reflection of his own guarded soul. He saw a fellow survivor, a person who had built walls around her heart for reasons he could only guess at.

The trust between them was no longer just a professional courtesy. It was personal. It was the quiet, unshakeable bond of two soldiers who had fought a war together and had come out the other side, scarred but alive. It was a trust forged in blood, fire, and the shared, sacred act of healing. And in the heart of the grimy, desperate city of Rizvan, it was the most real and valuable thing that Lloyd possessed.

---

The clinic had become a well-oiled machine, an island of serene efficiency in the chaotic sea of the Lower Coil. The passage of another week had solidified the partnership between Lloyd and Sumaiya into something that felt as natural and essential as breathing. Their days were long, filled with the endless, grinding work of tending to the city’s forgotten, but there was a deep, quiet satisfaction in it that Lloyd found both surprising and deeply addictive.