On the morning of Day 116, with only one day leftover before the seven-day Quarter lock expired, the tool shed behind the common hall became an arena of quiet, painful truth.
The air inside the shed was freezing, scented with damp sawdust, animal fat. The sharp, pine-scented smell of boiled linseed oil. A single shaft of pale morning sunlight cut through the high window row vent, lighting up a heavy oak ceiling floor beam eight feet above the dirt floor.
Nineteen-year-old Fellis Dain sat on a carpenter’s bench, his left arm resting on a clean sheepskin pad. Beside him sat Paxa Sel, carefully unwinding the linen wraps that had bound his left hand and forearm for forty-four days, ever since the Cairn Host’s rigged log trap on the Hushwood cliff had crushed two fingers and a hand bone on Page 046.
As the last layer of raw, unwhitened flax fell away, Kezra Venn and Yseld Arken stepped forward to inspect the healing limb.
The hand was pale, the skin thin and glistening with yellow healing oil. But the swelling had almost fully resolved. Across the back of the hand, the fractured second hand bone had knit with a thick, solid callus of new bone. A hard, hardened bridge that proved Paxa’s careful splinting had held the posture true.
