By mid-afternoon, the main ward of the lower hospice held a strange kind of quiet disobedience. Every fighter sitting or lying along the walls had spent decades learning a single reflexive answer to physical weakness. Draw breath inward, tighten the spirit vein gate, ignore the stomach, and push through the discomfort until the body obeyed. Bel Sar sat near the woodpile trying to flex his stiffened knuckles around the leftover heavy end of his splintered Ash Reed staff. Commander Keth Or stared at the thick bandage covering his shattered right hand and the two finger stumps from the lower shrine. Across the room, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren leaned against the whitewashed brick with his freshly maimed left hand—missing two more fingers from the iron guide-rod wedge—resting on his knee.
Mina had zero patience for martial stoicism when tissue needed rebuilding. Standing by the kitchen table where Mother Renn ladled marrow broth simmered with bitter gentian root and very thirsty barley into twelve clay pot bowls, she handed the heavy two-handled ashwood tray to sixteen-year-old Halin.
“Fighters above Bronze are the worst patients in the valley,” Mina told the boy, loud enough for half the room to hear. “They think refusing soup proves their spirit is unbroken. Then their stitches tear open at midnight because they shivered from low blood heat. Your job this afternoon isn’t to admire anyone’s sword record. Make sure every bowl comes back empty.”
