Mara presses the stone into Eric’s palm without ceremony.

  It is unremarkable at first glance, smooth, river-worn, gray with a faint vein of white running through it like a frozen thread. It fits his hand as though it has been shaped for it.

  “Keep it,” she says.

  Eric turns it over with his thumb. “For what?”

  She closes his fingers around it. “Always keep it in your hand. Or somewhere touching your skin.”

  “Why?”

  Mara’s mouth curves, but there is no humor in it. “Because it will help.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Eric says.

  “It’s the only one you’re getting.”

  He looks down at the stone again, then back up at her. She is already stepping away, gathering her things, the matter settled. Eric sighs and tucks the rock into the pocket inside his shirt, where it rests against his ribs.

  He feels nothing.

  Which, he learns later, is the point.

  Eric leaves the village two days after the fever breaks.

  There is no grand farewell. A few nods. A loaf of bread wrapped in cloth. A woman presses dried apples into his hands and thanks him like he personally reached into death and pulled her children back.

  He doesn’t know how to answer that, so he bows his head and leaves before the weight of it settles too deeply.

  The road stretches east, then south, threading through farmland and scrub forest, from one small village to the next. Eric learns the rhythm quickly: arrive tired and hungry, ask where help is needed, trade labor for food and a place to sleep.

  He mends fences. Clears ditches. Chops wood until his hands blister and harden. He learns which villages have more mouths than grain, and which have grain but no hands to work it.

  And everywhere, everywhere, there is need.

  Sometimes it is simple. A broken wheel. A collapsed roof. A missing goat.

  Sometimes it isn’t.

  In Willowford, he meets a healer named Tamsin who hasn’t slept properly in weeks.

  She is younger than he expects, her hair pulled back in a knot that has long since given up on neatness. Dark circles bruise the skin beneath her eyes. Her hands shake, not from weakness, but from exhaustion held at bay too long.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “You can wait,” she tells the line of villagers clustered outside her door. “Or you can help.”

  Most of them wait.

  Eric steps forward. “I can help.”

  She eyes him skeptically. “Can you read?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Can you listen?”

  “Yes.”

  She hands him a stack of slates covered in cramped writing. “Then don’t make me regret this.”

  The room smells of herbs, sweat, and sickness. Cots line the walls, some occupied, some empty only because their occupants have gone home, or elsewhere. Eric moves where she points, does what she tells him. Holds bowls. Washes wounds. Keeps people drinking water when they are too tired or stubborn to remember on their own.

  He keeps breathing.

  The stone stays tucked against his skin, a constant, grounding weight. When panic threatens, when a child’s fever spikes, when an old man’s breath stutters, Eric presses his fingers to it and lets the breath come.

  Tamsin notices.

  “You’ve been trained,” she says one night, watching him steady a woman wracked with pain.

  “A little,” Eric answers.

  She snorts. “That’s how it starts.”

  By the third day, she shows him more.

  “Minor healing only,” she warns. “Bruises. Cuts. Infection management. Anything deeper and you’ll burn yourself hollow.”

  Eric listens. Learns. He feels the mana the way Mara taught him, like a current beneath the skin of the world, and he learns how to nudge it, not command it. How to encourage the body to do what it already wants to do.

  It works.

  And it costs.

  The first time, he doesn’t notice until afterward. His hands tremble. His stomach twists with hunger so sharp it makes him dizzy. Tamsin shoves a bowl of stew at him without comment.

  “Eat,” she says. “Or you’re useless to me.”

  Later, he feels it again. A dull ache behind the eyes. A heaviness in his limbs. He sleeps like the dead and wakes still tired.

  “That’s the price,” Tamsin says quietly when he asks. “Compassion isn’t free. It spends you.”

  “Then why do it?” Eric asks.

  She laughs, brittle and honest. “Because if I don’t, they die.”

  The days blur together. Eric helps until his hands know the work without thought. He learns to pace himself, to stop before the hunger becomes weakness, before the weariness turns dangerous.

  Still, he gives more than he should.

  When he finally leaves Willowford, Tamsin presses a small pouch into his hand. “Trade goods,” she says. “And this…”

  She hesitates, then adds a sliver of carved bone etched with sigils. “For emergencies.”

  Eric bows. “Thank you.”

  She shakes her head. “Survive.”

  The road teaches him trade as much as healing.

  In one village, labor earns him dried meat and a wool blanket. In another, knowledge is more valuable than strength. Eric shows a miller how to reinforce a cracked beam. In return, he learns how to tell which merchants pay fair prices and which ones cheat with a smile.

  He begins to understand why healers travel, or why they don’t.

  Those who stay become pillars. Anchors. Every need leans on them until they bow or break.

  Those who move can choose where to spend themselves.

  Eric still hasn’t learned that balance.

  In Briar Hollow, he overreaches.

  A fevered woman collapses in the street. Her lungs rattle with fluid, her skin burning. Eric feels the weight of every watching eye. He feels the stone against his ribs and breathes.

  He tries.

  He pushes too hard.

  The mana resists, not violently, but firmly, and when it snaps back, it takes something with it. Eric staggers, vision dimming, his stomach cramping with a hunger so profound it borders on pain.

  The woman lives.

  Eric does not stand for a long time.

  That night, he lies awake, weak and shaking, and finally understands.

  Healing advances faster than any other path because the need is endless. Because every success invites another request. Because the line never ends.

  And burn out isn’t failure.

  It’s inevitability.

  The stone grows warm against his skin, almost comforting.

  Mara never said it would make things easier.

  Only that it would help him focus.

  As he drifts into uneasy sleep, Eric realizes the lesson isn’t just about magic.

  It’s about limits.

  And learning when not to give everything you have.