So long had the laws of the sciences tethered humans to their mundanity. Nature demands a balance, they mused and obeyed, lest it collapse into itself in fire and brimstone and cosmic dust.

Elior did not care what it was they thought, nor did he care to even ponder the verity of their claims. He, powerful and revered, did not hold himself to such limitations.

In an ironic twist of fate, the apostates of his village looked to him, a seraphic being who seemed to continuously defy their flimsy conjecture, for proof of divinity. Their godless hearts cried out for a reason to believe, despite the logical fallacies that held them in their clutches.

There was a sickness in the soil. Elior’s hands had been busy for weeks, crafting miracles for the masses until they came to him in droves, begging and tugging at his flax cloth cloak with their mortal hands.

It was unusual, he could admit, the sheer amount of them.

He stepped through the threshold of his tent, into the blazing heat of the desert to work his miracle upon the next expectant soul.

When his powder blue eyes swept over the the waiting woman’s face, a statement, not a question, fell from his lips, “you have been here before.”

Her tawny eyes widened. She nodded, her grip tightening around his outstretched arm. Tears tracked through the grime that clung to her face, dribbling down into the crease of an unsettlingly wild grin.

“I am most grateful, please do not think me greedy nor selfish!” she pleaded animatedly.

“You were sick with melancholy,” Elior recalled.

“Yes!” she gasped, smile broadening. “I have not felt it twisting around my heart since you helped me. You have worked a miracle on me, but I am not here for that.”

“What ails you?” Elior demanded. Her pupils consumed the ring of colour in her eyes. Something about it caused him great unease.

“I cannot think, my lord, I cannot sleep!” she breathed out almost with reverence. A crease formed between his brow. “My head, it throbs and aches and my heart—“ she pulled his hand to her chest.

Elior sucked in a breath. Her heartbeat thrummed wildly beneath his palm, faster than any human heart should beat.

His eyes trekked their pilgrimage over her features once more as he strained to diagnose her. She was sick, yet elated. Such contrast to the woman he had healed seven days ago.

There was something terribly wrong.

Elior pressed his hand into her chest with renewed purpose and willed that warm, celestial magic into his fingertips. Her heart hammered on, quickening its pace still.

_What was going on?_

The woman gasped, eyes bugging out of her head. Elior’s eyes widened as her heart beat dropped in pitch, not slowing its pace, thudding hard and furious beneath her ribcage.

And then it stopped.

There was a ringing in his ears as the woman collapsed to the ground in front of him. His hand remained outstretched, suspended in the air wherein it had previously made contact with life.

She had been sick with the sadness, then far too happy. And now, death was at his feet. Open, distant eyes and a lingering smile, frozen in time.

A breath fell from his chest.

Dread settled in the dead space between Elior’s ribs as he scanned his gaze across the gathering crowd.

He found there many familiar faces.