The chamber smelled of herbs and iron. It wasn’t the officer’s infirmary, but a narrow stone room with bare cots, scarred tables, and tools darkened from years of use. The place still carried order, less polished than nobles admired, but born of experience, by hands that had bound too many wounds to waste motion.
Five of us sat waiting. We were Royal Army recruits, though set apart from the main yard. This session felt different, quieter, almost forgotten. Today marked the start of Field Healer specialization.
The specialization itself was new, barely two years old. Before then, the army had treated wound care as an afterthought. That changed during the spring beast tide, when forty percent of a fresh infantry unit died, not from claws or fangs, but from poison, from blood left untended, from fractures ignored. The Count had given the order: the army could not afford to lose men to neglect. Someone had to be trained to keep soldiers alive long enough for real healers or mages to intervene.
Few enrolled. Most still dismissed it as wasted hours, a stain on pride. The stigma clung like old blood, especially since healing mages could close wounds faster than any bandage.
Even my friends turned away. Farid, now in Scouts, admitted some curiosity about poisons but ignored the rest. Leif sneered openly, calling it women’s work. Erik and Henry were the same; neither had the stomach for gore.
Erik had awakened just yesterday with a soldier-class, a minor earth affinity, and physical stats averaging around eleven. But he didn’t care. Logistics was his goal, and he already spent his hours with Henry, watching clerks tally crates.
That left me here. By choice.
I had studied beast lore, fortifications, rune systems, and siege craft. But not the human body, not what held us together, and how quickly it could fail. Since the first month, I had lived in the library. Its shelves had become my second barracks, each volume another thread in the web I’d been weaving since day one. This was the last thread missing.
The door creaked. A man stepped in, gray hair tied back, eyes steady, hands bare and unshaking. He wore no insignia, only plain sleeves rolled to the wrist.
“Welcome,” he said. His voice was flat but carried. “This is the Field Healer specialization. Over the next month, you’ll learn Basic Triage and Poison Stabilization. You are not healers. You are not mages. You are soldiers with bandages. Do it right, and someone lives long enough for help. Fail, and they don’t.”His gaze swept over us.
“Name’s Ralin. Tier Three, retired. I am not a healing mage. Before I joined the army, I learned under my father, a village healer south of Stonegate. Once in the ranks, I gave care where I could, binding wounds, setting bones, keeping men breathing until someone stronger arrived. I learned more about healing in the mud of battlefields than I ever did in that village. So when the Count started this program, Lieutenant Clifford himself came for me. Been training recruits since.
Now, we start simple. Grab a cloth. Tourniquets first.”
We moved quickly. Bundles of linen and rough splints lay stacked on a table. My fingers fumbled at the first knot until Ralin’s shadow fell across me.
“Good grip,” he said. “Too tight. Kill the limb, and you kill the man slower. Again.”
“Understood.”
We practiced high and low ties, binding above wounds, twisting cloth with sticks for pressure. Mara’s knots were neat but slipped. Tessa pulled hers too loose. The silent boy cinched his so tight his partner yelped. Ralin corrected each mistake without raising his voice, just nudging cloth, shifting sticks.
“Battlefield is loud,” he said. “You won’t always hear screams. Don’t waste time on comfort. Focus on blood in veins, air in lungs.”
Next came splints, wooden braces strapped with cloth. Tessa was slower moving than the rest, but her hands were quick. Mara’s adjustments were sharp and precise. I overthought knots, tightening and retying until the cloth frayed.
Ralin grunted once. “Good enough. Don’t waste time prettifying knots.”
When we paused, he picked up chalk and turned to a slate propped against the wall.
“You’ve drilled these basics before, stopping blood, setting bone. That keeps a man alive for minutes. But if you want him to last longer than that, you need to know what lies beneath the skin. Not neat drawings in books, the places where the body truly breaks, where it leaks, and how fast.”
I’d tied bandages a hundred times in survival drills, the motions drilled into muscle memory. But this was the first time anyone had explained why they mattered, where to place them, where seconds made the difference between life and death.
He sketched a crude outline, little more than a stick figure with thickened chest and limbs. The chalk jabbed at the thigh.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Arrow here looks like meat to most recruits. Wrong. Inside runs the femoral artery. Cut it, and he’s gone in under a minute. Tourniquet high, or you’re wasting your time.”
The chalk scraped across the ribs.
“Chest wound. A puncture here fills the lung with blood. He drowns on dry ground, gasping like a fish. Don’t waste time with cloth, it soaks through. Plug the hole. Wax, mud, pitch, your hand if you must.”
He tapped the side of the neck.
“Slice here, and you can’t stop it. Pressure buys seconds, not minutes. Tilt the head, clear the airway so he doesn’t choke on blood, and pray someone stronger comes.”
The chalk snapped in his fingers as he pressed too hard. His voice did not falter.
“Burns. Fire beasts don’t just char flesh, they cook lungs. A man may walk from the flames only to drop when his throat swells shut. Water won’t save him. Cooling will. Dirt smeared on, cloth soaked in anything. Ugly, but ugly beats a corpse.”
Ralin ground the chalk flat against the slate.
“Poison. Snake bite swells, spider bite blackens, beast venom seizes the heart. Don’t waste time naming what bit him. Tie high, cut if you must, bleed it if you can. Save who you can, accept who you can’t.”
He slashed a broad white line across the slate.
“Crush wounds. Rockfalls, siege engines, beast claws. Bone splinters, muscle tears, blood hides deep where no bandage reaches. If the limb’s cold, cut it clean. A stump lives. A dead limb takes the man with it.”
Mara’s voice trembled as she raised a hand. “What about the stomach? I’ve heard, ”
“Gut wounds?” Ralin cut her off. “Dead man walking. Nothing you can bind will stop the slow leak inside. You can drain him, ease the fever, maybe buy him a day. But without a mage, he’s already gone. Your job isn’t to save him, it’s to give him time. Time to speak, to write his name, before he passes.”
Silence fell, heavy as stone.
Ralin tapped arms, skull, joints in quick succession. “We’ll break these down in the coming weeks, how to bind, how to brace, how to cut when you have no choice. For now, remember this: beneath the skin are places where life ends in moments. Learn them, and you’ll know where to tie, where to plug, and where to let go.”
The words lodged deep. They weren’t theory; they were survival stripped bare. And in that moment, memory stirred. Back on Earth, I had skimmed anatomy in school, color-coded veins and arteries in a textbook, lungs sketched like balloons, poison reduced to tidy labels on a chart. Burns and amputations had been footnotes in history lessons, tragedies of wars long past. Here, those neat lines became fountains of death, those balloons became drowning lungs, those footnotes became orders barked in a stone room. Two worlds. Two systems. Both are merciless to the ignorant.
Ralin wiped the chalk from his hands. “That’s anatomy. Now, mana.
Tier One: the body starts pulling it in. Cuts close faster, scratches that would fester in weeks close in days. That means a shallow gash might heal before fever sets in, but an arrow in the thigh? He still bleeds out unless you tie high.”
He marked the ribs with a sharp line. “Tier Two: flesh looks the same, but control begins. Seven nodes open, spine, lower abdomen, upper abdomen, chest, throat, brow, crown. When they’re clear, a soldier resists shock longer, breathes steadier. A chest wound might give you time to plug it. Poison takes longer to spread. The body buys minutes you wouldn’t have at Tier One.”
Then he dragged lines between the points, connecting them. “Tier Three: channels form between the nodes. Blood clots faster. Wounds close cleanly. A crushed limb might hold warmth longer, meaning you can save it instead of cutting. A soldier with burns might keep breathing past the first few gulps. Sometimes a Tier Three survives what kills three Tier Ones. Sometimes he doesn’t. Depends on his pool.”
His gaze hardened. “But don’t misunderstand, you are not here to heal Tier Threes. If one drops, keep him breathing if you can, then wait for a real mage. Your work is for Tier Ones and Twos, the backbone of every line.”
I listened, letting his words settle. None of it was new to me, I had pieced the same together in the library months ago, but hearing them spoken aloud, stripped of diagrams and set against the battlefield, gave them weight. Tier One was assimilation, the body drawing in mana faster or slower depending on training. Tier Two came as the seven nodes cleared, one by one, laying down stability. Only with all of them open did Tier Three begin, weaving channels to connect them, the first true transformation of the body’s hidden pathways.
Ralin’s words carried none of that theory. His voice was battlefield blunt: who could be saved, who could not.
Enough to unsettle us, not enough to master. That would take weeks.
By dusk, Tessa was pale, Mara grim, the garrison boy blank-eyed, memorizing every word.
My palms were raw, stained deep blue by dye.
Back in the barracks, I opened my status sheet.
STATUS
Name: Edward
Class: Unawakened
Affinity: N/A
HP: 140 / 140
HP Regen: 7/day
MP: N/A
Attributes
- Constitution: 14
- Strength: 13.5
- Agility: 12
General Skills
- Writing (25)
- Reading (25)
- Math (25)
- Running (25)
- Meditation (25)
- Marching (25)
Ten months of drills and punishment had carved those numbers higher than I had ever imagined. Constitution had risen the most, nearly doubled since I first joined. At first, I collapsed on marches. Now I carried weight and kept pace. Strength trailed close behind, each spar and lifting drill laying another brick. Agility had been the slowest to climb, but it still outstripped the trembling boy who could barely dodge a swing during month one.
My status screen had grown less useful. All six of my displayed general skills had capped at Level 25 months ago. They still improved me in practice, the runs made me faster, the meditation steadier, but the system no longer marked those gains. For a time, I worried that if the numbers stopped rising, I would be stuck.
But those doubts had faded. What I once treated with suspicion had become ritual, as vital as eating or marching. Over the last four months, I had embraced breathing and meditation fully, and they had carried me past the plateau where others slowed. Constitution thickened my frame, Strength steadied my arms, and even Agility crept upward, if only in small steps. Veterans warned that growth nearly stops past eleven, yet mine had held a steady climb. The difference was clear: controlled breath and quiet focus.
The sheet showed only six skills. But I knew there were more, hidden until Awakening or too complex for the board to capture. Fieldcraft learned from scouts and sapper drills, the careful eye I’d built from rune diagrams, even ropework from today’s lesson, none of it showed, but all of it lived in me. The display was only a sketch, never the whole truth.
The awakening was close, I felt it in restless nights.
Whatever waited ahead, a soldier’s blade, a tactician’s mind, or a scholar’s quill, I had already laid the foundation.
Now I was adding flesh and bone, one bandage at a time.