"—There doesn't seem to be any deep injuries. Physically, at least. Most of the damage appears to be mental—"
The voice reached him through a thick haze, muffled and distant, like it was travelling up from the bottom of a well, losing pieces of itself on the way.
Soren stirred anyway.
His eyelids fluttered, light bleeding through them sharply enough to sting, and he turned his head on instinct, trying to escape it, then stopped because the movement sent a spike straight through his skull.
His head throbbed, not the dull ache of a bad sleep but something sharp and insistent, like a wedge had been driven in and left there, each heartbeat turning it another fraction.
His stomach cramped next, a deep, nauseating twist that made his breath hitch, not hunger or nerves, but something sour and unsettled, as if his body still hadn't decided whether it wanted to keep functioning after everything it had been forced to do.
He was tired, exhausted in a way sleep couldn't fix, the kind that sat behind his eyes and in his bones, pressing him down into the mattress like gravity had doubled while he wasn't looking.
"…It seems he's woken up," the voice continued, closer now. "But I'm not sure how lucid he'll be."
Soren grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut again.
Not yet.
He didn't want to deal with this, with people, with questions, with that awful, too-clean smell that always clung to places where pain had been scrubbed away for appearances.
If he stayed still long enough maybe they would assume he was still unconscious and leave him alone, maybe they would talk over him and around him until they got bored, maybe the world would forget he existed for an hour or two.
That hope lasted all of three seconds.
"Soren?"
That voice was familiar, close enough that he could feel it through the haze, and it made something in his chest tighten in a way that was hard to name.
He let out a quiet breath and opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was white stone, faintly cracked with age, the lines catching the light in thin, uneven seams.
The air smelled of herbs and clean cloth, too clean, almost sterile, trying unsuccessfully to mask the underlying notes of blood and medicine, and beneath that, the faint heat of divine power that always lingered after healing.
To his left stood a priestess, robes neat, expression professional but not unkind, the sort of calm that came from seeing too many people break and knowing most of them would still get up and walk away afterwards.
To his right was Felix.
Felix looked… wrong.
Not injured or dishevelled, not even visibly shaken in the way Soren would have expected after a night like that, and yet the easy grin he always wore was gone, replaced by something stiff and restrained.
His shoulders were held tight, his hands hovering like he didn't know what to do with them, and his gaze stayed fixed on Soren's face in a way that made it clear he hadn't looked away once.
Guilt.
The realisation slid into place immediately, uninvited, as clean as a dagger going into a sheath.
'Ah.'
'So that's why you're looking at me like that.'
"Are you feeling alright, Soren Arden?" the priestess asked, her voice gentle in the way healers were gentle, as if soft words could keep a mind from splintering further.
"I'm fine."
The words came out flat and automatic, the answer his mouth had learned to give long before it ever bothered checking whether it was true.
Felix flinched.
It was subtle, just a tightening around the eyes, a small shift in posture, but Soren noticed it anyway; he always noticed things like that, especially now, when his brain felt sharpened by pain and exhaustion and the aftertaste of panic.
He understood why Felix was looking at him like this.
Anyone would, after what had happened, after the blood, after the way Soren had… after the way he had made himself do it.
He just didn't have the energy to unpack any of it, not with his head pounding and his stomach churning and that thick, sticky memory trying to push itself to the front of his mind like it owned the place.
He turned his head slightly toward Felix.
"Felix, what happened to the money?"
The silence that followed was immediate, heavy enough that even the priestess seemed to pause.
She blinked once, as if recalibrating what she thought she was dealing with.
Felix stared at him like he had misheard, like the words couldn't possibly be the ones Soren had chosen.
"…That's what you're worried about?" Felix asked slowly, the disbelief in his tone sharp around the edges.
"Yes."
Soren's throat felt dry, and the single word scraped on the way out.
The reaction was exactly what he expected: shock, disbelief, probably concern layered on top of confusion, the kind of look people got when they realised your priorities had shifted into something they didn't recognise.
Normally, he might have cared how that looked.
Right now, he didn't.
All that mattered was the pouch, the weight of it, the proof that the night hadn't ended with him getting nothing but nightmares in return.
If it was gone, if everything he had done, everything he had forced his body through, ended with empty hands, then he didn't know how he would justify any of it to himself without something inside him snapping in half.
Felix exhaled, dragged a hand through his hair, and for a second the face he wore most days slipped, revealing something rougher underneath.
"…It's fine," he said after a moment, quieter now. "We got it all back, and the guards paid us extra since those guys were wanted. Here."
He tossed something toward the bed.
Soren caught it reflexively.
The familiar weight settled into his palm, grounding in a way nothing else had managed since he had woken, and his fingers tightened around it before he could stop himself, like his body had decided this mattered more than pride or appearances.
He opened it just enough to see the glint inside, coin edges catching the infirmary light, the small, sharp shine of something real.
It was all there.
More than he had expected, too, judging by the heft, and that should have made relief bloom in his chest.
It should have.
It was what he had been clinging to as a reason, as a justification, as proof that the world still ran on rules he could understand.
Instead, the feeling came only in a thin, brief thread, like a match struck in the wind, and then it went out.
His hand still shook.
His stomach still rolled.
The memory still sat behind his eyes like a bruise you couldn't stop pressing.
"Thanks," he managed.
Felix's mouth opened like he wanted to say something else, like he had been holding words in his throat since Soren went down, then closed again.
His gaze flicked toward the priestess, then back, as if asking for help in a language Soren no longer wanted to speak.
Soren tied the pouch shut, the motion careful despite his numb fingers, and looked toward the priestess.
"So when can I leave?"
Her brows knit together, and that professional calm finally shifted into something closer to concern.
"Well… physically, you're mostly fine," she said, choosing her words like she was trying to build a bridge out of them. "The stab wound wasn't deep enough to cause lasting damage, and the healing incantation worked as intended. You'll be sore for a few hours, but nothing serious."
She hesitated, then continued, slower.
"However—"
That was enough.
Soren swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood.
Pain lanced through his abdomen immediately, sharp and bright, and his breath caught as his knees buckled for a fraction of a second before he forced them straight again.
He pressed a hand against his stomach, right over where the blade had gone in, and felt the tenderness there, the wrongness of his body remembering even if the wound itself had been stitched closed by magic.
'So much for mostly fine.'
Felix took a step forward, alarm flashing across his face.
"Soren, you should—"
"I'll be careful," Soren cut in, the words too quick, too practised, the kind of promise people made when they didn't want to be stopped.
He straightened slowly, teeth clenched, and forced himself upright until the room stopped tilting.
"If I'm allowed to leave, then I'm leaving."
The priestess opened her mouth again, likely to warn him about rest and mental strain and the way shock could come later, the way the body could pretend it was fine until it wasn't, but Soren didn't wait to hear it.
He couldn't, because if he stood here long enough he would either start shaking again or say something he couldn't take back.
He looked at Felix one last time.
Felix's eyes held too much within them, a mixture of guilt and worry and something else beneath it.
"…Thanks for today," Soren said, because it was true, and because it was all he had.
The words felt inadequate as soon as they left his mouth, too small for everything Felix had done, too small for the fact that Soren was still breathing, but he couldn't reach for anything bigger without brushing against the part of himself that was still raw and bleeding.
Then he turned and walked out of the infirmary, ignoring the way both of their gazes followed him all the way to the door.
————「❤︎」————