The smell of sterile ozone, alcohol, and sharp antiseptic hit me the moment I crossed the threshold. The Academy infirmary was operating at full capacity.
It didn't look like a school clinic. It looked like the aftermath of a localized warzone. Dozens of pristine white cots lined the massive stone hall, separated by humming brass medical monitors and glowing cyan IV drips.
I dragged my heavy boots down the center aisle, bypassing the minor casualties until I found a semi-partitioned trauma bay near the back.
Four pristine white cots.
Three of them were occupied by a highly concentrated, incredibly depressing summary of today's main plotline.
Cot one: Zee Kazrana Lestune. Unconscious, a heavy stabilization brace locked rigidly around her cervical spine. The direct result of provoking a veteran Regressor into a fistfight.
Cot two: Nova Celestine Melody. Awake, staring blankly at the ceiling with an oxygen cannula strapped to her face, still processing her near-death hypoxic shock from Syevira's deadzone.
Cot three: Alya Pance Varine. Wrapped tightly in thick alchemical bandages, curled on her side after surviving the Imperial Prince's twisted definition of a fairy tale.
A brawler, a mage, and a hidden princess. All neatly arranged in a row like a collector's display of defeated plot devices. If someone had told me Day Two of this Academy ended with the entire main female cast hospitalized in the exact same trauma bay, I would have assumed the author was rushing the storyline.
Fortunately, cot four was empty. A horizontal surface. The universe finally yields.
"Oh no! Please don't collapse on the floor!"
The voice was frantic, bright, and completely lacked the heavy, cynical undertone of everyone else in this gothic death-trap.
A girl rushed into the trauma bay. She had soft, honey-blonde hair pulled into a messy side-braid that was already coming undone, and large, incredibly expressive cerulean blue eyes. She wore a standard white medical apron, but it was at least one size too big, making it look like the apron was wearing her rather than the other way around.
Halfway to my cot, her boot caught the edge of a brass IV stand.
She let out a high-pitched squeak, stumbled completely off-balance, somehow managed to juggle a clipboard and three glass vials in her hands without dropping a single one, and skidded to a breathless halt exactly one foot in front of me.
I stared down at her.
My Native System flared quietly above her head.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ANNOTATION — Angelica Astoria Godfrey ]
◈ [GREEN] [CROWN]
◈ [GREY] [ROOT]
◈ [GREY] [HOURGLASS]
...
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Angelica Astoria Godfrey. A major character in the novel.
The future Saintess of the Church of the One Architect. The ultimate endgame healer of this franchise.
Beautiful wasn't the right word for her. She was aggressively, overwhelmingly cute. A walking, breathing sanctuary of pure, clumsy innocence. In a world populated entirely by manipulative sociopaths, traumatized regressors, and arrogant aristocrats, Angelica was the one character who genuinely just wanted everyone to be okay.
She was also, objectively, my favorite character from the novel.
Looking down at her wide, panicked blue eyes, the exhausted, cynical gamer part of my brain suddenly felt a very rare, very specific urge to mess with her.
"By the Architect!" Angelica gasped, taking in the dried mud on my knees, my torn collar, and the sickly violet hue of my right knuckles. "Your hand is completely frozen! And your breathing—you're hyperventilating! You're going to trigger an Arcane Redline!"
"I had a mild disagreement with the local weather," I rasped, my voice a hollow void. I swayed slightly toward the empty cot. "I am claiming this bed."
"Yes! Yes, sit down, please!"
She didn't hesitate. She grabbed my good arm—surprising me with how stubbornly strong her grip was for someone so small—and practically guided me onto the mattress.
I let my knees give out. I collapsed onto the white sheets with a heavy thud. The sheer relief of sitting down after twenty-seven hours of standing nearly knocked me unconscious.
"Okay, don't sleep yet, stay with me!" Angelica ordered. Her voice trembled with genuine, frantic concern as she pulled a rolling brass medical tray to my side. She fumbled with a pair of sterile gloves, nearly dropping her clipboard onto the floor before catching it against her chest.
She let out a frustrated little sigh, pushing a stray strand of blonde hair out of her face. "I need your name for the triage log! Quickly! I'm Angelica, by the way. I am a first-year too. I am actually supposed to be out in the courtyard doing the sparring assessments right now, but half the cohort decided to nearly die in the last two days, so the faculty drafted me for emergency triage duty."
The future Saintess complaining about being drafted as unpaid medical labor. Adorable.
"Arzane," I muttered, staring blankly at the ceiling. "Vornelius Astarte."
She hurriedly scribbled it down with a silver pen, her handwriting likely as frantic as her breathing.
"Okay, Arzane. Listen to me. I need to run a deep-tissue diagnostic on your primary nodes before the frostbite reaches your nervous system."
"It's too late," I replied, keeping my voice utterly deadpan. "The frostbite has reached my soul. Just amputate the arm at the shoulder. Tell my family I died fighting a glacier."
Angelica froze. The clipboard slipped from her fingers and clattered loudly onto the metal tray. She looked at me with an expression of pure, unadulterated distress.
"What?! No! We are absolutely not amputating your arm!" she cried out, her cerulean eyes shining with sudden, very real tears. "Please don't say things like that, you're going to make me cry!"
Ah. She is far too pure for this Academy. I am definitely going to hell for bullying the healer.
"I was joking," I exhaled softly. "Mostly."
She pouted, shooting me a glare that was entirely too adorable to be threatening, before forcibly composing herself.
"Sit up a little bit," she instructed, trying her absolute best to sound medically authoritative despite the slight sniffle. She reached out toward my shoulders. "I have to scan the base of your spine and extract your ambient exposure logs. Unclasp your ORG and give the machine to me."
I didn't move.
My brain, currently running on the absolute last dregs of its caloric reserves, processed the acronym slowly.
ORG.
Odic Recovery Gear. The life-support machine the Academy issues to every student. The filter that stops the toxic Ink in the air from turning your lungs into solid crystal.
Right. Of course. Let's give her the machine so she can read the logs.
In Odia-Prime, survival aesthetics are strictly dictated by wealth. High-tier aristocrats commission Artificers to compress their ORGs into elegant jewelry—a sapphire ring, a delicate platinum necklace, or an emerald earring that silently purifies the air. Commoners receive whatever clunky scrap metal the Academy has in storage. A rigid copper bracer that chafes your skin, a bulky mechanical belt, or a heavy brass collar that routinely hisses hot steam onto the back of your neck.
My numb left hand reached over and tapped my right fingers. Bare. I swept my palm across both my wrists. No bracers. I patted my waist. No belt.
Right. Commoner. I must be wearing the heavy brass collar.
My fingers reached up toward the back of my neck to find the heavy mechanical latch. They brushed against the frayed fabric of my uniform collar. Then, they touched my bare skin. I blinked. I patted the back of my neck. I pressed my fingers all the way down to the base of my spine.
There was no brass. There were no copper coils. There was no mechanical latch.
There was absolutely nothing there.
Wait.
Where is my life-support machine?