"Appraisal," she whispered.
The hum of divine magic buzzed in her skull. Her vision blurred for an instant as the boy's status unfurled before her eyes.
Name: Ryle
Age: 12
Race: Human
HP: 200 / 15200
MP: 1 / 1
Physical Condition:
— Blunt force trauma (severe)
— Internal haemorrhaging (critical)
— Cranial fracture (critical)
— Organ failure (progressing)
— Left eye: ruptured
— Ribcage: partially collapsed
— Scar tissue (old, extensive)
— Nerve damage (moderate to extensive)
— Localized brain damage
Mental Condition:
— Acute exhaustion
— Trauma-linked dissociation
Affinities: [None]
Gifts:
— [Tongue of Babel] (Passive)
Allows communication in all spoken languages.
Mariane blinked once.
She stared.
And the world shifted under her hands.
Her knees nearly gave out, despite already kneeling. She pulled her hand back from the boy's forehead, fingers trembling with a cold she hadn't even noticed creeping in. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as she traced the details again.
The physical damage—yes, it was horrifying. But she had faced worse. She had healed worse.
No. It was something else.
Her gaze locked onto the number that hung in the air like a death sentence:
MP: 1 / 1
For a long moment, she couldn't move. Couldn't think. The silence in the room sharpened until it screamed against her skin.
"That's…" she muttered, the words catching on her tongue. She forced more divine magic through her senses, enough to spike a headache behind her eyes, and ran the appraisal again.
The numbers didn't change.
One.
The light faded from her fingertips. She sat back on her heels, stunned, the cold stone floor biting through her robes.
"…One?" she whispered, disbelieving.
None of the knights reacted. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
Her hands fell into her lap. She stared down at the boy—this Ryle—his shallow breathing rasping against the silence.
"One MP…" she said again, almost to herself. "It's… impossible."
A human child. Twelve years old.
The average MP at that age was easily ten thousand—often more, even without training or talent. Even those with no aptitude for magic carried a natural reserve. Mana wasn't just a tool for spells—it was life itself, flowing through blood, bone, and breath like a second heartbeat.
Without it, the body couldn't heal. Couldn't even remember how to heal.
And this boy—
There was nothing.
One MP. A single drop of water in a dying field.
No wonder her healing had failed. There was no mana to bridge to, no internal current to catch her spell and carry it forward. Only the thin, flickering ghost of life, too fragile for her magic to anchor itself to.
Her stomach twisted violently.
She shook her head once, slow and numb, horror bleeding into her bones.
"This can't be real."
She had healed soldiers whose lungs had collapsed mid-battle. Women gutted to the spine. Children burned from the inside out after mishandling seals of fire and ice. In every case, she'd had something to reach for. A pulse. A thread of energy answering her call.
Here—only silence.
Only a single, dying ember.
Her breath hitched. She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, steadying herself, her fingers bloodless against her lips.
The injuries—internal hemorrhaging, shredded organs, a fractured skull. The old scar tissue mapped across his body like a cruel history written in flesh.
None of this was new.
None of it from a single event.
Years.
Years of damage. Layered. Unhealed.
A boy with one MP should have been dead a thousand times over—crushed by a fall, strangled by fever, torn apart from the inside by wounds he had no means to recover from.
And yet he breathed.
Mariane closed her eyes for a heartbeat, forcing herself to breathe with him. In. Out.
Focus.
Healing was still possible. Even with a mana reserve this thin, it wasn't hopeless.
It would take time—an excruciating, continuous healing process stretching over hours, maybe even days.
She exhaled shakily and stripped her magic back to its barest form, reducing its consumption to almost nothing.
A soft glow returned to her hands.
Not enough.
Before she could heal enough critical damage, he would bleed out.
Mariane narrowed her focus sharply. She needed precision.
"Sight Beyond," she murmured, invoking the second aspect of her Appraisal.
Her vision shifted.
The world peeled itself open.
She could see the damage with cruel clarity—the break in his ribs, the organs sagging from ruptured support, the lung on the verge of collapse. The ruptured eye. The fractures crawling like spiderwebs through his skull.
Prioritize.
falling organ. Lungs. Brain.
The rest could wait.
She began weaving the simplest healing threads she knew, sealing vessels, reinforcing tissues one by one.
Gritting her teeth, she fought to hold the line.
But it wasn't enough.
At this pace, before she could reach the vital organs, he would bleed to death.
Panic clawed at her throat.
Think. Move.
Her mind scrambled for a solution—and found one.
Code Red.
Without hesitation, Mariane snapped her head around, her voice sharp and commanding:
"You," she barked, pointing to the nearest priest standing frozen by the door.
The young woman jolted, almost dropping the bundle of herbs she clutched.
"Y-Yes, Your Grace?"
"Get High Priestess Thorne," Mariane said, her voice cutting cold and clear through the haze. "Right now."
The priest blinked, confused. "Lady Thorne? But she's retired, she's not even—"
"Now," Mariane said, each word razor-edged. "Tell her It's Code Red."
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The young priestess still stood frozen, her mouth working uselessly.
"Code Red...?" she repeated, baffled. "I—I don't know what—"
Mariane's gaze snapped to her like a whipcrack. "GO," she barked, divine authority rolling off her like a storm.
The girl flinched, then bolted, nearly tripping over the hem of her robes as she fled down the corridor.
Silence fell hard and heavy. The only sound was the low hum of Mariane's strained magic.
The knights shifted uneasily, exchanging glances, but none dared move closer. Doubt anchored them where they stood.
Except Elara.
The senior knight stepped forward, her expression tight, her eyes burning with fury and disbelief.
"Your Grace," Elara said in a low voice, strained to the breaking point, "are you out of your mind?"
Mariane didn't lift her head.
"There's no other way," Mariane said. "He's unconscious. He won't feel the pain."
Elara's jaw clenched until the muscles trembled.
Behind her, Princess Seren, pale and wide-eyed, found her voice at last.
" Elara—what's going on? What is Code Red?"
Elara hesitated, looking for a heartbeat as if she might refuse to answer. Then she exhaled sharply and turned.
"I read about it," she said grimly. "Code Red is a war protocol, Your Highness. Developed during the Bloodtide Campaigns, a hundred years ago."
The knights stiffened visibly at the name. Even the very air seemed to recoil.
Seren blinked rapidly, struggling to keep up.
"It was created when healers were too few, and soldiers were dying faster than magic could save them," Elara continued, her voice growing harder. "Code Red is... an emergency method. It means doing whatever it takes to keep someone alive. At any cost."
Seren's face went paler still.
"They couldn't always heal," Elara said, her voice flattening. "So they stitched gaping wounds with cursed wire to keep organs from spilling out. Cauterized torn flesh with hot irons. Cut off crushed limbs to stop the rot before it could spread. Splinted shattered bones by hammering iron rods into living marrow. Anything—anything—to keep a fighter breathing long enough to drag them back to the front."
Elara hand clenched around the hilt of her sword, her knuckles bleaching white.
"The results," she said grimly, "were... mixed. Some lived, only to die days later from shock, fever, or gangrene. Others survived—but crippled, twisted beyond recognition. And some..." She shook her head. "Some simply broke—body, mind, spirit. Never whole again."
Seren covered her mouth with both hands, horror blossoming across her face.
"And the aftereffects," Elara continued, her voice barely more than a whisper, "could be worse than death. Scarring so deep the body barely worked. Pain that never stopped. Phantom limbs that ached until they drove people mad. Sometimes, even when they survived..." Her throat bobbed. "They wished they hadn't."
Seren stumbled back a step, as if physically struck.
She turned to Mariane,
"And now," Elara said bitterly, "Your Grace would use it on a child."
Mariane did not lift her head. Her voice came soft, but iron-hard.
"It used to be taught to trainee priestesses," Elara said grimly "Fifty years ago, it was abolished by royal decree. because The cost was too high. The scars too many. Healing magic and medicine have come a long way since then. There's no need for brutality anymore."
Her fists trembled slightly at her sides.
"Even back then," Elara said, "it could only be learned on the battlefield. On living bodies. No safe practice. No controlled tests. Only blood. Only pain. And even when done perfectly..." Her voice cracked. "Even then, the results weren't always enough."
A bitter smile ghosted across her lips.
"These days, barely anyone even knows how to perform it."
She hesitated, then her voice sharpened with doubt.
"Even if you want to... is there anyone left who actually can?"
At that, Mariane finally looked up.
Her golden eyes, red-rimmed from exhaustion and rage, locked onto Elara's.
"There is one," she rasped. "High Priestess Thorne."
Elara inhaled sharply.
"Thorne," Mariane repeated, voice ragged. "She was among the last to be taught the full protocol. And worse—during her trainee days, she was caught in a landslide. A hut she and others were sheltering in was buried under tons of earth and stone."
The room seemed to freeze solid.
"She performed Code Red with her own hands," Mariane said. "On her fellow priestesses. On wounded children. On soldiers burned nearly to ash. They were trapped inside, half-suffocated, half-crushed—but still alive. Just barely."
Her hands kept moving, steady despite the quiver in her voice.
"With no proper supplies, Thorne had to improvise. She splinted shattered limbs with broken beams. Stitched torn flesh with thread unraveled from her own robes. Cauterized gaping wounds using nails heated red-hot over scraps of fire. She held their broken bodies together with nothing but makeshift tools and a will that would not break. And she kept them breathing—long enough for the rescuers to dig them out."
Elara grimaced. Several knights shifted uncomfortably.
"Most of them survived," Mariane said, her voice tightening. "They made full recoveries later, once treated properly. Because they had been unconscious when she operated, they were spared the worst of the trauma—the agony and shock that could have shattered them. She saved them."
A beat of silence.
"But... not all. Some died before help could reach them. Some wounds," she whispered, "even she couldn't hold closed."
Mariane's hands faltered for half a heartbeat, then steeled again.
"Back then," she said hoarsely, "only battlefield healers could perform Code Red properly. They were trained not just to heal, but to tear, to maim, to brutalize—if that's what it took to make life cling to a dying body."
She shook her head.
"But those healers are gone. That brutal age is gone. No one in this era is trained for it anymore."
Silence crushed the room.
Mariane worked tirelessly, buying time, sealing torn vessels, knitting splintered bones, fighting for every precious second.
Seren stared at her, wide-eyed, trembling—then drew a deep, shaking breath.
"Then," she whispered, voice breaking but clear, "we'll save him."
Mariane bowed her head—not in surrender, but in fierce, silent thanks.
From deep within the halls, the heavy tread of footsteps echoed—reinforcements, coming fast.
But time was running out.
And Mariane would not let him die.