The baby screamed hard enough to scrape against the cave walls, thin sound, wet sound.
The girl wrapped him tighter with shaking hands. Blood soaked through the cloth anyway. Newborn blood smelled strange. Metallic. Sour. Mixed with the bitter stink of burned mana drifting from Rin's fingers.
Elara did not move.
Mira leaned over the open abdomen. Sweat rolled from her chin and struck exposed muscle. Her hands glowed pale blue inside the wound. Tiny threads of mana stitched through torn vessels one by one. She looked exhausted already. Her pupils trembled.
"Pulse?"
"Fast," Rin said. "Weak."
"How weak?"
"Like a rabbit."
She cursed under her breath.
The uterus lay open beneath her hands, thick muscle, dark blood pooling beneath the hips despite the mana coagulation. She reached deeper, fingers sliding inside the cavity. More blood spilled over her wrist.
"There's retained tissue."
Mira swallowed. "Placenta?"
"Part of it."
