The room had sunk into that fragile quiet that comes after panic and before the shape of things is understood. Outside, snow still drummed against the eaves, a steady, metallic whisper that made every footfall and cough inside feel precious. Elias lay curled on the narrow bed, eyes half-closed and thoughts half-gone, when the thin scrape of a door being opened pulled the three of them from the fog of exhaustion.
At first Elias thought it was the healer returning — Mara or the farmer's wife — with more broth or another poultice. But the shape that filled the doorway was not the squat, earth-smelling frame he expected. A young man stood there, shoulders squared as if the breath of the storm were nothing to him. His hair was a brief, bright flash against the dim room — white and cropped close to his skull, no more than a shadow halo. He was slight rather than burly, but there was an alert, unyielding line to his jaw that belonged to someone who was used to being obeyed.
Daren and Lyra snapped fully awake. Daren's hand slid toward the hilt of his sword out of reflex; Lyra's eyes narrowed and measured. The strangers in their life had become dangerous or miraculous in equal measure.
The young man stepped forward with a measured calm and spoke in a clear voice that carried without needing to shout. "I am the village chief. My name is Rowan Thane. I am twenty years old." His tone was simple — the kind of plain statement that insists on being taken for fact.
Lyra barked a short laugh that had more nerves than humor in it. "A village chief at twenty? You've got jokes."
Rowan's mouth tilted almost imperceptibly. "There's little humor in having people's lives in your hands," he said. "Come." He gestured with a single hand toward Elias.
Before anyone could move more than a muscle, Rowan crossed the room. In one motion he pulled a short knife from his sleeve and made a precise, surgical cut along the old stitches that held Elias's wound together.
Time seemed to jerk.
Elias's eyes flew open and a violent arc of pain tore through him. "What are you doing?!" he cried, raw with shock and the fresh flare of stitches undone.
Rowan's expression did not falter. He did not shout. He did not look like the kind of man who ever surprised himself. "Stay still," he commanded, voice steady as stone. Then, with both palms hovering over the open seam of raw flesh, he murmured one single syllable in a language Elias did not know.
A light like new spring unfurled from between the young man's hands. It was not bright the way a torch is bright; it was quieter, as if you could cup it and it would purr. The light was green — not the sickly neon of enchanted trinkets Elias had once seen, but a deep, living green that reminded him of moss and sap and sun through leaves.
The wound closed.
Not slowly, not in that grotesque, cinematic way where skin crawls and knits inch by inch. It sealed in a hush — a small, living hush that felt like a balm laid by an invisible hand. Blood stilled as if the air itself had decided this place must be cleansed. Muscles and torn skin folded back into place, and within breaths the edges of the cut had drawn together and vanished into pale, faintly shining healed lines.
Elias shot up, breath hacking, entire body trembling from shock and the residue of pain. "How—" The question broke off as he stared at Rowan with a mix of gratitude and alarm.
Rowan lowered his hands as if nothing unusual had occurred. He was composed, as if the green light and the closing wound were the most normal thing in the world. "Calm yourself," he said simply. "I did what needed doing."
Daren and Lyra crowded in, incredulous. Daren's eyes scanned the seam on Elias's leg as if looking for trickery. "You cut his stitches off," he said, voice rough with accusation and something like awe, "and then… and then you—"
Rowan's hands folded behind his back. "Yes," he replied. "It needed to be reopened for the cleansing. Some wounds fester if left. The healer had bound it hastily in the storm; that was necessary then. Now the tissue required fresh breath." He inclined his head toward a corner of the room where an old pot of herbs steamed. "You had the right help. Mara knows how to bind and keep. I know how to coax the green back."
Lyra, who had been on the verge of snapping in part hysteria and part gratitude, could only stare. "What are you?" she asked—no pretense, only blunt curiosity. "A priest? A wizard? A witch-brother?"
Rowan's smile in answer was a small thing, wise beyond his short years. "A few things," he said. "I am chief because I am the one who grew up listening. I am young because the old chief passed on, and people asked for someone who could act quick. As for what I am—my people call the gift the Verdant Hand. It is mercy from the root-place." He looked at Elias in a way that carried more than a casual assessment. "It is not magic that fixes everything. It is a tending."
Elias rubbed the place where the wound had been, his fingers coming away clean. He flexed his toes, then his ankle. Motion returned easily, as if the bandage had been a cloak now removed. He tested his calf with cautious steps around the little bed, each movement a cautious experiment. "It doesn't hurt," he said, astonished, his voice low and incredulous. He met Rowan's eyes. "It's gone."
Rowan nodded, but his face held a seriousness that kept Elias alert. "The healing is not a miracle for everything. It takes more from those who have less to give. I can mend flesh and calm fevers. I can knit torn sinew and stop bleeding. But I cannot bring back from the dead." His tone had a small caveat; there was no swagger in it. "What you might call resurrection — that is not in my hands."
Elias's mind flinched at the word. He thought — briefly, sharply — of the book and the clockwork that had rewound his own timeline. He said nothing, letting the thought curl in the corner of his mind like a half-remembered song.
Daren's gaze was practical. "How did you learn this?" he asked, voice wary. "Did the forest teach you? A spirit? Some old line of healers?"
Rowan's expression softened. "My grandmother taught me to listen," he said. "Mara taught me what herbs to bind and when to be patient. The forest taught me the sound of sap waking. People here—our lives depend on winter, and winter takes fast. From that, we learn. I learned to touch the wound and call the green because it was necessary. It's part prayer, part craft, part a thing the wood gives to those who will spend time with it."
Lyra pressed her knuckles to her mouth, an expression mid-blunt and mid-worn. "You make it sound simple."
Rowan gave a small, rueful smile. "It is never simple. You cut a wound the wrong way and it becomes a story. You feed fever with the wrong root and the patient bears the cost. But I do what I can. I am twenty; the village has more experience than me, but they hoped and asked and—" He shrugged, young and oddly regal all at once. "So I lead."
A small sound came from outside the curtained doorway: a muffled footfall, then the lighter clack of another. A child peered in, wide-eyed, and then hurried away when Mara — the healer — barked something in the next room. Outside, muffled voices rose: the low hum of villagers keeping their routines, shuffled and cautious in the storm.
Rowan slid his hands into his pockets and looked back at Elias. "Rest now," he said. "You need to keep your strength. The storm will last a day or two. There's no shame in sleep when the world is so loud. We have shelter enough, and if you're able after sunrise, you can see the healer again."
Elias felt the exhaustion like an animal at the edge of a hearth — the bone-deep kind that suggests sleep immediately or never. He let his legs return to the bed, sinking down with the slow surrender of someone who has finally dropped a heavy burden. Lyra and Daren settled into chairs not far off, their faces folding into a comfortable, watchful quiet that meant sleep would not be safe for them either. The room filled with the soft, companionable noises of human beings who can afford to let their defenses drop for a little while.
But even as sleep threatened, questions lingered in Elias's head like slow embers: the meditative figure he had seen in the forest, the book that had tried to fold into his mind, the way the bear had hesitated—something unseen knitting and unknitting time around him. Rowan's healing felt like mercy and warning at once: a proof that the village had its own secret weapons, and a reminder that the world they'd stepped into ran on a logic of its own.
Rowan bent once, as if checking on the mattress, and then straightened. "If you wake and have questions," he said quietly, "come find me at the elder's hut. Not everyone will understand. Not everyone will wish you well. But I will show you no cruelty."
Lyra snorted softly, more tired than disbelieving. "You sound like a diplomat," she said.
Rowan smiled without offense. "We make do with what we must. For now, sleep."
And sleep Elias did — not dreamless, but less haunted; threads of the day fell away like a cloak. Outside, the wind still argued its case, but inside the little wooden room the green light that had stitched flesh together felt like a promise: that in this place, even a twenty-year-old chief could command the quiet mercy of leaves and make something whole again.