The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the ozone of spent energy. Apollo felt the restoration hit him like a torrential downpour of cool, crystalline water lashing against a desert landscape that had long since forgotten the sensation of moisture.
Aisella's hands were trembling, the pale light of her healing magic flickering like a candle in a gale. She wasn't at her full output; her energy reserves were dangerously depleted, her very soul feeling as though it were being scraped thin to provide this reprieve.
But the precision she applied was nothing short of surgical, the refined, instinctive grace of an elven healer who had spent a lifetime perfecting the art of stitching life back into broken vessels. It wasn't a total cure, but it was a lifeline.
