She arrived at Iron Blade at nine-oh-three in the morning.
The recruitment board hung outside the side entrance—day-rate temp teams, sign-up cut off at eight-thirty every morning. She was thirty-three minutes late.
The receptionist was a blank-faced woman in her mid-twenties, sorting through a stack of forms. She glanced at Vera Shen once, eyes stopping on the brace on her left arm.
"Healer?"
"Yes."
"E-Rank." Not a question.
"Yes."
The receptionist pulled a thin gray form from the drawer. "Fill it out and bring it back. Today's team is confirmed—you're on standby. If someone drops out, you're in. Otherwise, wait-out fee is five hundred crystals. You can leave in an hour."
Five hundred crystals.
Vera wrote in the remarks column: Left arm in recovery. Right arm fully functional. Healing output efficiency maintained above 90%. Then she set down the pen.
"Waiting area is inside."
* * *
The waiting area was a corridor. Two rows of chairs lined the walls.
Seven or eight people were scattered around, most of them staring at their communication crystals. One was dozing. Vera found a seat near the door, set her shoulder bag on her lap, and began scanning the room—not out of curiosity. Habit. Walk into any space with Awakened in it, figure out who's the most dangerous first.
C-Rank Swordsman. Old injury on the right shoulder. Damp weather today. Slight limp.
D-Rank Mage. Unfocused pupils. Didn't sleep last night.
The one in the dark blue jacket in the corner—
Her gaze stopped.
That logo. Embroidered. Sold at Dark Flame's internal shop for thirteen hundred each. Over three years, she'd helped fold twenty jackets exactly like it.
Sol Song turned his head. Looked straight at her.
One second.
Then he smiled. "Hey, Battery Lady."
* * *
Three years ago, Sol Song was the first person to call her that.
He always said it with a touch of warmth—like calling a piece of equipment, but with more consideration than he gave the others. A good battery shouldn't break, so he'd put in a word for her sometimes, occasionally shielded her from the worst assignments. Asset protection. Not her.
"You're out too?" He crossed his legs, tone easy. "Heard Dark Flame's been doing a purge. Cleared out a lot of people."
"I left voluntarily."
"Oh." He nodded, eyes drifting to her left arm. "Injured?"
"Got it in a Rift. Almost healed."
"Which one?"
She met his eyes. "A-Rank Ash Valley. Last month's mission."
Sol's smile tightened—barely. Not obvious. But she'd been watching his face for three years. She caught it.
"That mission... Captain Han said afterward that you withdrew early."
"Did he."
Vera looked away and started going through the spare bandages in her bag. She didn't say anything more. Neither did Sol.
About a minute of silence. He spoke first. "Do you have any plans to join a Guild? E-Rank Healers are in high demand right now. Don't sell yourself short."
"Looking around."
"If nothing comes up, consider Iron Blade. They're recruiting Healers—D-Rank Rift team, low pressure..."
She listened to him talk, nodded, gave single-word responses. She wasn't listening to the content. He didn't know what she'd seen.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the receptionist walked in. "Team Three. D-Rank Rift, Still Water Cave. Standby confirmed—Vera Shen. Regular member got food poisoning. You're filling in."
Vera stood up. So did Sol.
"I'm on Team Three too," he said. "Together?"
"Sure."
The hallway was poorly lit. Sol was half a head taller, quick-stepped. He slowed deliberately. She walked beside him, bag strap pressing into her right shoulder, the left-arm brace warm under her sleeve.
Her mind was very quiet.
Not a decision—she'd made it last week. He was second on the List. The only question was timing.
Still Water Cave. D-Rank. Low combat risk, low healing demand. Plenty of preparation time. Like pre-mission Imprint calibration. Healers did it for teammates all the time. Standard procedure.
She glanced at his left wrist. "Your wristband is worn. There are marks along the Imprint output section. Going into the Rift like that could interfere with your energy flow."
Sol looked down. "Really? Hadn't noticed."
"Let me wrap it. Resistance tape, simple fix. Keeps it from affecting your attack precision." She pulled the spare bandages from her bag. "Two minutes."
"Sure, thanks." He extended his left wrist without hesitation—exactly the way he had every time over the past three years when she'd given him supply injections, done Imprint maintenance.
She began wrapping. Slow. Steady. Like a careful Healer.
Her right fingertips rested against the skin of his wrist.
She could feel the pulse of his Imprint—B-Rank, strong and healthy, like a wide, even river. She'd treated enough Imprints to know the feel of every rank.
She also knew what it felt like to rot from the inside.
She let the Decay flow from her fingertips, slow and thin. A small amount. Like dropping a grain of sand into a river. As long as the grain was poisoned enough, it didn't need to be much.
Timer set.
Thirty days.
"Done." She secured the end of the bandage and stepped back. "Try it."
Sol made a fist. "Sits perfectly. You've gotten better."
"Thanks."
She tucked the remaining bandage back into her bag and kept walking. One part of her mind was very cold, like a counter turning quietly.
In thirty days, when the Decay activated on a B-Rank Imprint: combat performance would steadily decline, Imprint output would crash repeatedly, and on day thirty, entering the Rift—complete failure.
The assessor's verdict would be overuse of Imprint and cumulative wear from extended combat service.
That verdict got filed dozens of times a month.
* * *
The Still Water Cave mission took three hours.
Her right arm output normally, healing efficiency within E-Rank limits, no one raised any questions. Sol took the front line and worked beautifully—B-Rank cutting through a D-Rank Rift was pure domination. He glanced back at her occasionally. "Keeping up, Battery Lady?"
"Keeping up."
"That's why you're the Battery." He laughed and turned back, splitting one of the Bone-Eroding Hounds clean in half with a single strike.
A beautiful strike.
She patched him with an Imprint acceleration. Shaved 0.4 seconds off his next slash.
* * *
Mission settlement. Day rate: twelve hundred crystals, transferred to the Imprint account.
The team exchanged parting words. Sol clapped her on the shoulder. "Let's work together again sometime. Once your right arm's back to full, come find me. I'm looking for a steady partner. You're one of the better E-Rank Healers."
"Okay."
She watched him walk toward the transfer point. Steady stride, Imprint producing its normal low-frequency hum—nothing like what it would sound like in thirty days.
A recruitment notice was posted on the exit board: B-Rank and above attackers wanted. Iron Blade Strike Team. High pay, long contract. Inquire at Guild front desk.
She didn't stop to read it.
* * *
She got back to her cheap single room as rain started outside the window.
She sat at the desk and took out a sheet of white paper—not a document in her communication crystal. Physical. The kind that disappeared when you burned it—and wrote the List from memory.
Six names.
The first had a line through it. Dean Zhou, Dark Flame logistics manager. In fifteen days, the functional Imprint in his left leg would begin to atrophy.
The second one had a line through it now too.
She folded the paper, put it in the bottom drawer, and locked it.
Then she went to cook a pack of instant noodles. While the noodles soaked, she stared at the hot water seeping into the dried cake and ran the numbers.
Healing Pool: 91.3%.
Dean Zhou had cost 1.2%. Sol Song had cost 1%.
Six targets, two marked. Four remaining. At the current rate, she could mark at most—
The noodles in the bowl had fully loosened.
She stuck her chopsticks in and stirred.
She needed to reassess the injection volume for each application. A B-Rank Imprint required almost ten percent more Decay agent than Dean Zhou's C-Rank. If the remaining targets were higher-ranked...
Wait.
The ranks of the remaining targets.
She set down her chopsticks.
Han Roar was S-Rank.
* * *
91.3% of the Healing Pool, to Decay an S-Rank Imprint—she had no idea how much that would cost.
She wasn't even sure it would be enough.