Lysa Thornlight

Lysa Thornlight ground herbs with a rhythm older than the town itself. The mortar was cracked, stained with centuries of use, though no one ever asked how such age had gathered in her quiet little clinic. People never asked the right questions in Briar’s Rest. They came to her for poultices, tonics, and soft-spoken assurances. They left healed—or at least obedient. This morning, she stirred a simmering tea, tasting it with a practiced tongue. “Not quite like the blight in Harronvale,” she murmured to herself. “But close.” She smiled faintly at the memory—of a village long reduced to dust—though she recalled it the way others remembered last autumn. A knock sounded. She didn’t bother to look up. “Come in, Mira.” Mira slipped inside, eyes distant, smile too bright. Lysa checked her pulse, touched her temples, adjusted whatever delicate threads of influence kept the girl placid. “You’re doing so well,” she murmured. Mira’s gaze drifted, unfocused, then returned with hollow warmth. When Mira left, Lysa washed her hands, rubbing at faint red smears under her nails. Someone else had slipped the net. Someone who shouldn’t have. Talla. The woman moved like a cautious shadow—alert, unsoftened by the lull that blanketed everyone else. A little tear in the veil. A threat. Lysa stepped outside, cloak catching a breeze that shouldn’t have existed in still weather. She spotted Talla near the well, studying cracks along the stones as if they whispered to her. That gaze—too sharp. Too knowing. Lysa approached with her healer’s smile, the one that had soothed infants two hundred years gone. “Your eyes are troubled,” she said gently. “The town can be overwhelming for newcomers.” Talla didn’t hear her, but she felt the presence—turning, wary. Lysa admired the resilience. Admirable things were often troublesome.