The Royal Physician

The queen’s summons arrived at dawn — a wax-sealed parchment pressed with the royal crest, still warm from the courier’s ride.

Dr. Ishan Varel read it twice before folding it into his coat.

The command was clear: Travel to Ashenfield. Confirm the containment.

He didn’t need to ask what that meant. “Containment” was the crown’s polite word for destruction.

If even one villager had survived, that word would not have been used.

He left the capital before sunrise.

The sky was the color of smoke, and the road stretched through dying fields.

Every mile carried the same silence he remembered from the first report — heavy, unnatural, as if the world were holding its breath.

Marek rode beside him, anxious and quiet.

The young scholar had insisted on coming, calling it “for documentation,” though Ishan suspected it was more curiosity than courage.

“You think the stories are true?” Marek asked.

Ishan didn’t answer immediately. “Truth isn’t always what we believe. It’s what refuses to stay buried.”

They reached Ashenfield by nightfall.

The village was gone. Not destroyed — erased.

The earth was black and brittle. The air tasted of metal.

And yet, as they dismounted, Ishan felt heat rising from the ground, as if the soil still remembered fire.

The only structure left standing was the stone well at the village center.

The rope hung still. The bucket rested against the rim, clean — too clean.

Marek crouched, studying the ground. “No bones. No ash piles. It’s as if the fire burned everything.”

“No,” Ishan said softly. “Something gathered what remained.”

A faint sound echoed — a scrape of stone.

Both men turned.

At the far edge of the ruins, the old chapel leaned crookedly, its bell tower half collapsed.

A shadow moved inside.

“Stay here,” Ishan ordered.

He drew a lantern from his satchel and stepped toward the building.

The flame flickered, and the air grew colder.

Inside, the pews were overturned. The altar cloth had melted to glass.

But beneath the altar, he saw footprints — human, light, almost childlike.

And then he heard it — a whisper.

Soft. Fragile. Not quite a voice.

“Help… me…”

He froze.

“Who’s there?”

Something stirred in the shadows — a figure curled beneath broken stone.

A girl. Pale, trembling, her skin streaked with gray veins like marble cracks.

When he knelt beside her, she flinched but did not flee.

Her eyes, clouded yet alive, locked onto his.

“You’re not supposed to be alive,” he whispered.

“I—I was burning,” she stammered, “but the fire stopped. It stopped for me.”

He reached for her wrist — her pulse beat faintly, erratically. Her veins were warm, glowing faintly beneath the skin.

Marek appeared at the doorway, voice tight. “By the saints… what is she?”

Ishan didn’t answer. He only said, “Alive. For now.”

They brought her back to their camp at the road’s edge.

The girl slept fitfully, murmuring words that made little sense — fragments of prayer, or perhaps memory.

As Ishan examined her, he noticed something unsettling.

The flesh around her veins shimmered with fine dust — ash.

Not layered atop, but woven within her skin.

“Doctor,” Marek whispered, “if this is the fever, we’ll be infected—”

“It’s not contagion,” Ishan said. “It’s transformation.”

That night, he wrote by lantern light.

Subject appears neither dead nor fully living.

Tissue response to heat irregular — the infection may preserve rather than destroy.

Speech coherent. Memories fragmented.

He paused.

His quill hovered over the paper as he thought of the queen’s sealed orders.

If the crown learned of this girl, they would silence her — and him.

He closed the journal and looked at the small figure sleeping beside the fire.

She stirred, whispering in her sleep:

“They buried the sun…”

He froze. “What did you say?”

Her eyes opened, unfocused, almost blind.

“The priests… they took it… and buried it under the palace…”

Then she slipped back into unconsciousness.

By morning, Ishan knew what he had to do.

He burned the written report.

When Marek protested, he said only, “If this reaches the court, she dies. And so do we.”

Marek looked shaken. “We can’t hide her. The queen ordered confirmation.”

“Then we’ll confirm the lie,” Ishan replied. “Ashenfield is gone. No survivors.”

“But—”

“Do you want to watch them burn a child?”

Silence.

Marek turned away.

They left Ashenfield at dawn.

The girl, wrapped in a cloak, slept in the wagon.

Behind them, the wind picked up.

Ash rose from the blackened fields and drifted toward the rising sun —

as if the land itself were remembering what it lost.

That night, back on the road to Veyra, Ishan stared into the fire.

He had done the unthinkable — defied a royal command.

The girl murmured again in her sleep.

This time, her words were clear.

“Doctor… they’re coming.”

He leaned closer. “Who?”

Her eyes opened, glowing faintly in the firelight.

“The ones who buried the sun.”

A distant sound echoed through the valley — the faint clang of metal, rhythmic, deliberate.

Not the sound of hooves.

The sound of chains.

...----------------...

End of Chapter 2

To be continued…

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