The silver-white blade traced an arc of light, slashing directly at the tentacle. The creature's skin was as hard as stone, and the blade got stuck halfway through.
Mia gritted her teeth and twisted her wrist. Using the flexibility of the blade, she pried loose a scale on the tentacle's surface. Blue liquid erupted from the crack, splashing onto the floor and corroding tiny pits into the stone slabs.
Vera lay on the floor, trembling all over.
She saw Lovene—the Saintess she had envied, framed, and wished would disappear. The girl was now curled up amidst the splintered bedboards, her holy robe soaked in blood, a shocking patch of dark red spreading across the white fabric at her waist.
Her face was as white as paper, and a trickle of blood hung from her lips, yet she was still moving. She propped herself up with one arm, trying to support her body.
After a moment of dazed paralysis, Vera instinctively rushed forward to help her up, cradling her in her arms.
Blood welled from Lovene's mouth.
Unable to speak, she could only pull her right hand out from beneath her body, conjuring a sphere of golden Holy Light to cover her waist. But this Holy Light was different from before; it was dim and flickering, like a candle in the wind.
Mia had severed the tip of the tentacle. The severed limb writhed frantically on the floor, spraying slime everywhere, but the main body retreated into the mist, seemingly preparing for an even more violent strike.
Mia took a step back, her sword tip still pointed out the door. She turned her head and shouted,
“Your Highness!”
Lovene did not reply. Once her broken bones knit back together, the Holy Light dissolved from her palm. Her arm went limp, and her body slumped forward, resting heavily against Vera's lap.
Lovene's heartbeat thrummed through the thin holy robe, rapid and faint, like a moth desperately beating its wings in a rainstorm, hovering between life and death.
Lovene coughed, spitting a mouthful of warm blood onto Vera's physician's robe.
“Why...” Vera trembled, her voice hoarse. “Why did you save me?”
Her tears spilled over. She could not understand why this girl, whom she had wished to ruin, would use her own body to shield her from that fatal blow.
If Lovene hadn't pushed her away, those shattered bones would have been hers. That blood-soaked robe would have been hers. In fact, with her fragile constitution, she would have died the instant the tentacle made contact.
Lovene lay in her arms, her cheeks stained with blood. Her brilliant golden eyes had lost their usual calm depth, leaving only a weary tenderness.
“Because... I am the Saintess.” Lovene's words came in fits and starts, as if she were using the last of her strength to drag each syllable from her chest. “Saving people is... my duty. Besides...”
She raised her blood-slicked hand and gently touched Vera's cheek. Her fingertips were icy cold, yet Vera felt as though she were being branded by hot iron.
“Besides, you are a physician... and... many people still need you.”
Vera's lips trembled violently.
“B-but I framed you! I spread those rumors, I tried to ruin you! I don't deserve to be saved by you! I'm a horrible person!”
“I know.”
“You knew, and you still saved me?!”
“I... do not blame you.”
Lovene coughed, each breath accompanied by a faint wheeze. Even so, her eyes remained fixed on Vera's.
“Everyone... strays from the path sometimes. You cannot invalidate the whole road... just because you took a wrong turn.”
Vera shook all over. She knew all too well that she had indeed strayed, but having walked that path, she didn't deserve forgiveness at all.
If her plan had succeeded, the girl before her would have been completely ruined, her reputation utterly destroyed.
The consequences would have been no different from destroying a life.
She was a wretch, an unforgivable wretch.
Yet the very girl she had hurt the most did not think so.
“I know what you were like before. You treated the poor and refused their money... You delivered babies from difficult births, and you prayed in the storms for those who were gravely ill...”
Vera squeezed her eyes shut.
The difficult birth... She had thought no one knew about that. After all, she had buried that memory long ago, along with her old medical records.
“You changed... because you couldn't save that mother. You felt you weren't good enough... so you didn't dare try again.”
“But Vera... no one can save everyone. I can't, and you can't either. But we can... save one more.”
Lovene paused, the light in her eyes growing even gentler.
“When you first became a physician... you weren't thinking, ‘I want to save everyone’... You thought, ‘I want those without money... to be able to live well.’”
Her fingers slipped, resting limply in Vera's palm.
“That version of you... has always been there. You just locked her away.”
Vera stared down at the pale hand in her palm. She didn't understand how someone like her could be forgiven by this girl, but she had no time to dwell on it now.
“Stop talking, please stop talking! You're going to be fine... You're going to be fine!”
Vera pressed her hands against Lovene's waist, trying to stem the blood still seeping from the wound, but her hands were shaking too violently to apply any real pressure.
She looked down at her fingers. The hands she had once been so proud of, hands capable of suturing the most complex wounds, were now trembling in the blood like a withered leaf in the wind.
In a daze, she recalled that rainy night, the scene of the pregnant woman and her unborn child dying under her hands.
Back then, she had been just as helpless as she was now.
But...
“That version of you has always been there. You just locked her away.”
“Save one more.”
Lovene's words echoed in her mind over and over, like a finger gently tapping against the door of her heart that had been locked for so long.
She remembered the promise she had made when her mother fell ill—to ensure that all poor people could afford medical care.
She hadn't thrown it away. She had locked it up, but she had never discarded it.
That promise was still in the cabinet, kept alongside every scalpel she had ever used, every roll of gauze, every medical text. She had never truly discarded them; she had just been too afraid to look.
But her hands still remembered.
They remembered how to hold a blade, how to suture, and how to apply pressure to a wound that was draining away a life.
Her trembling fingers slowly clenched into fists.
You don't have to save everyone.
You only need to save one more.
Just this one.
Slash!
Mia's sword came down once more.
This time, she put all her strength into it. The blade bit deep into the base of the tentacle with a piercing screech. The tentacle spasmed violently, its tip whipping back out of the mist to smash a corner of the stone wall beside the clinic door, sending debris flying and dust billowing.
Mia gritted her teeth, gripping the hilt with both hands, and pulled back sharply.
The blade sliced clean through the base, severing the tentacle entirely. A torrent of blue blood welled from the stump, flowing over the threshold and into the clinic.
The severed tentacle twitched a few times on the ground before finally falling still. A low, distant wail—sounding as though it came from the very bottom of the ocean—reverberated from the mist, rattling the clinic's windows.
Then, the sound faded into the distance, and the mist seemed to thin slightly.
Seeing this, Mia immediately spun around and rushed back to Lovene's side. Tossing her sword to the ground, she reached out with trembling hands to support the nearly unconscious Saintess.
And the moment she lifted Lovene, she heard a sound from behind her.
It was the sound of a drawer being pulled open.
Vera was kneeling before the medicine cabinet, rummaging through it. Her fingers were still shaking, but they were steadier than before.
She pulled out gauze, styptic powder, and a roll of clean bandages, then returned to Lovene's side.
“Move.”
Her voice was somewhat hoarse, but it held something new that hadn't been there during her earlier hysterical crying—a sense of resolve that was slowly reforming.
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