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The sharp, bitter snap of the dark chocolate was the most vibrant thing Maya had experienced in days. She let it melt slowly on her tongue, closing her eyes as the sugar and caffeine hit her system. It wasn't a magic potion, but the sheer normalcy of it felt like a minor victory.
She opened her eyes and looked over at her father. William was sitting on the very edge of the vinyl guest chair, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the floor. He was currently twisting his silver watchband around his wrist, over and over, the metal clinking softly against the buckle.
Courtly Etiquette hummed quietly in the back of her mind, a subtle, passive filter over her perception. She didn't just see a nervous man; she saw the exact mechanics of his discomfort. His shoulders were hunched, protecting his core. His eyes kept darting to the telemetry monitor clipped to her gown, terrified it was going to suddenly flatline. He was a man used to walking into boardrooms and fixing failing companies, and here he was, utterly powerless, watching a machine dictate whether his daughter lived or died.
"Dad," Maya said gently, breaking the heavy silence.
William's head snapped up. "Yeah? Need some water? The nurse said you could have ice chips if you—"
"I'm okay. I don't need anything." Maya shifted slightly against the pillows, the thin mattress squeaking. "How's Chicago?"
William blinked, completely thrown by the mundane question. "Chicago? It's... it's fine. Windy. Cold." He let out a dry, humorless chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was supposed to be auditing a logistics firm down by the Loop. When your mother called on Tuesday, I just walked out of the conference room. Left my laptop on the table. God only knows what the client thought."
"They probably thought you had an emergency," Maya pointed out.
"Yeah. Probably." He looked at her, really looked at her, his expression softening into something raw and aching. "I'm sorry I wasn't here, May. When it happened. I should have been closer."
Arthur—the man who had lived thirty-two years without a father before getting hit by a truck—felt a strange, phantom pang of empathy in Maya's chest. He knew this guilt. It was useless, corrosive, and entirely human.
"You're here now," Maya said. She didn't offer a sweeping absolution, because she didn't think the original Maya would have done that, but she didn't twist the knife either. "And you brought good chocolate."
William managed a small, genuine smile. "I'll buy out the whole bodega if it keeps that color in your cheeks."
Before the conversation could stumble into heavier territory, the heavy door swung open.
Doctor Aris walked in, accompanied by a young resident pushing a bulky, rolling ultrasound machine. Aris looked even more exhausted than he had that morning, a faint shadow of stubble clinging to his jawline, but his eyes were sharp. He glanced at the drawn privacy curtain, noting the new admission, and kept his voice low.
"Afternoon, Mr. Gallagher," Aris murmured, nodding to William before stepping up to Maya's bed. "Maya. How are we feeling in the new digs? Less beeping, I hope."
"A lot less," Maya agreed. "I feel okay. Just tired when I stand up."
"Expected," Aris said, pulling the stethoscope from his neck. "Your body has been running a marathon while lying flat on its back. Let's take a look under the hood. Lay back for me, please."
Maya complied, letting her head sink into the pillow. William immediately stood up and backed away to the corner of the room, giving the doctors space, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
The resident unhooked the wand from the ultrasound machine and grabbed a bottle of clear gel. "This is going to be a little cold, Maya."
He squirted a generous amount of the thick, freezing jelly directly over her heart, right beneath the collar of her gown. Maya hissed through her teeth, her newly heightened senses amplifying the shock of the cold.
The resident pressed the heavy plastic wand against her skin, sliding it firmly between her ribs.
The monitor of the machine flickered, pulling up a grainy, black-and-white, cone-shaped cross-section of her chest cavity. It looked like a weather radar staring into a storm. Aris leaned in, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes locked on the rhythmic, pulsing shapes on the screen.
He reached out and tapped a button on the console.
Suddenly, the room was filled with the sound of her own blood flow. Whoosh-thump. Whoosh-thump.
Maya held her breath. She had heard this sound in her inherited memories. Usually, it was accompanied by a terrible, liquid squelching noise—the sound of her faulty mitral valve failing to close, letting blood wash backward into the atrium.
But today, the sound was... cleaner. It wasn't perfect. There was still a slight, fuzzy hiss at the end of the beat, a whisper of a leak, but the primary thrust of the muscle was strong and rhythmic.
Aris stared at the screen for a long, silent minute. He asked the resident to adjust the angle, capturing the valve from three different views. He measured the ejection fraction, clicking the trackball to freeze the image and draw digital calipers across the ventricles.
William was practically holding his breath in the corner, his eyes darting between Aris's unreadable face and the monitor.
Finally, Aris reached over and handed Maya a paper towel to wipe the gel off her chest. He turned the machine's volume down.
"Well," Aris said slowly, turning to face William. "I am not a religious man, Mr. Gallagher. I rely entirely on pharmacology and surgical intervention." He looked back down at Maya. "But your daughter is making a very strong case for spontaneous remission."
William let out a breath that sounded like a sob. "It's better?"
"The regurgitation is significantly reduced," Aris confirmed, crossing his arms. "The beta-blockers and the diuretics have finally taken a firm hold, drastically reducing the workload on the muscle. The valve itself is still deformed—that is a structural reality we cannot medicate away—but the surrounding tissue has tightened. It's compensating."
"So she's going to be okay?" William asked, taking a step forward.
Aris held up a hand, tempering the expectation. "She is out of the immediate danger zone. If this trajectory holds through the weekend, we can discharge her on a strict regimen of oral medications and bed rest at home. But," he leveled a stern, uncompromising look at Maya, "this is a fragile truce. One bad infection, one severe spike in adrenaline, or one missed dosage, and that valve will tear completely. You are off the cliff edge, Maya, but you are still walking on the tightrope."
"I understand," Maya said softly, wiping the sticky gel from her skin. I have four days to get my Vigor high enough to survive a stiff breeze.
"Good." Aris offered a rare, tired smile. "Keep resting. I'll see you tomorrow."
As the doctors wheeled the machine out, William collapsed back into the guest chair, running both hands over his face. "Jesus," he whispered. "Thank God."
Maya didn't mention that God had nothing to do with it, and that an ancient, sentient magic system forged by Merlin was currently keeping her blood pumping. She just pulled the hospital blanket up to her chin and watched the afternoon light slowly turn a deep, bruised orange outside the window.
The next few hours passed in a slow, quiet haze. Eleanor returned with a stack of admission paperwork and a lukewarm cup of cafeteria tea. The dynamic between her parents remained polite but strained, a delicate dance of avoiding old arguments while trying to focus entirely on Maya.
By 8:00 PM, the sky outside was pitch black, reflecting the fluorescent lights of the room against the glass.
"Visiting hours are technically over," Nurse Davis announced, popping her head into the room. She looked over at the drawn curtain of the 'B' bed, where the battered girl had finally fallen into an exhausted, painkiller-induced sleep. "I need to turn the main overheads off."
"We're going," Eleanor said, standing up and stretching her stiff back. She walked over and kissed Maya's forehead. "I'll be back first thing in the morning, honey. Call me if you need anything. Seriously. Even if you just can't sleep."
"I will, Mom. Go home. Sleep in your own bed."
William lingered near the door, awkwardly holding his suit jacket. "I'm at the Marriott down by the bridge. I'll come by after breakfast." He hesitated, then stepped forward and gently squeezed Maya's shoulder. "I love you, kiddo. I'm glad you're still here."
"Love you too, Dad."
The heavy door clicked shut, sealing them out.
Nurse Davis walked over to the wall panel and killed the harsh overhead fluorescents, leaving only the soft, ambient glow of the floorboards and the small reading light above Maya's bed.
"Try to get some actual sleep, Gallagher," Davis muttered, checking Maya's telemetry feed one last time. "I'll be doing rounds at midnight. Don't make me wake you up."
"Night," Maya whispered.
The nurse left, leaving the room submerged in the quiet, synthetic hum of the hospital night shift. From the other side of the privacy curtain, Maya could hear the slow, congested breathing of her roommate.
Maya waited ten full minutes, watching the red digital numbers on the wall clock flip. 8:15 PM.
She had roughly three and a half hours until the nurse returned for rounds, and nearly four hours until the System reset at midnight. It was time.
First, the loot.
Maya pulled the thick hospital blanket entirely over her head, creating a small, dark tent. She didn't want the sudden flash of golden light to alert the sleeping girl on the other side of the curtain.
She closed her eyes and visualized the Inventory tab.
[Item Selected: Daily System Box (Common)] Command: Open.
The familiar mental click echoed in her mind. Beneath the blanket, the air shimmered with a warm, golden dust. Two solid objects dropped onto her lap, their weight pressing gently into her thighs.
She opened her eyes in the dim light filtering through the blanket.
The first was a neat stack of modern currency, exactly like the last one. She thumbed it quickly—three twenty-dollar bills. Sixty bucks. The System was essentially paying her an allowance to survive.
The second item was different. It wasn't a glass vial. It was a heavy, dark grey stone, roughly the size of a bar of soap, smooth on one side and coarse on the other. It felt cool to the touch and smelled faintly of oil and iron.
[Item Assessed: Whetstone of the Vanguard] *Description: A minor sharpening stone pulled from the squires' barracks of Camelot. * Effect: When used during the [Armaments Maintenance] task, it doubles the durability buff applied to the Host's weapons or armor. Consumable. Good for 3 uses.
Maya ran her thumb over the coarse grain of the stone. It wasn't a stat boost, and it wouldn't fix her heart, but doubling the durability of her "armor"—her IV drip and medication—could prove vital if she ever needed to exert herself in the waking world without her fragile body snapping.
She quickly slipped the money and the heavy whetstone into the same scratchy pocket of her gown where she had temporarily held the first drop. She would transfer them to her socks tomorrow when she had a moment of privacy.
She pushed the blanket off her face, letting the cool, conditioned air of the room hit her skin.
She lay perfectly flat, resting her hands by her sides. She took a deep breath, letting the steady thump-thump of her heart anchor her.
She had stalled long enough. The physical conditioning quota wasn't going to clear itself.
Maya closed her eyes. She pushed away the smell of the hospital, the sounds of the city, the soft breathing of her roommate. She reached out for the golden thread of the Avalon Protocol, demanding entry into the crucible.
The transition hit her like plunging backward into an icy lake.
The sterile air vanished, instantly replaced by the damp, heavy chill of the Otherworld. The soft mattress beneath her hardened into cold, uneven cobblestones. The ambient hum of the hospital was entirely swallowed by the whistling wind blowing over the high, dark stone walls.
Maya opened her eyes.
The bruised-plum twilight of the courtyard stretched above her. She was wearing the thick, boiled-leather gambeson again. The heavy wooden waster she had dropped earlier was lying on the stones exactly where she had left it.
"You are late," a voice grated from the shadows of the weapon racks.
Sir Percy stepped into the dim light. He had discarded his heavy woolen cloak, revealing the blackened chainmail that hugged his massive frame. He wasn't holding a wooden training sword tonight.
He was holding a steel mace. The flanged head was dull, but the weapon was solid iron, easily weighing fifteen pounds.
Maya slowly pushed herself up from the cobblestones, the phantom aches from her previous sessions flaring to life in her joints. She stared at the mace, her mouth going dry.
"I thought we were using wood," she said, her voice sounding thin in the vast courtyard.
"Wood is for children learning to hold their balance," Percy rumbled, rolling his thick shoulders, the chainmail clinking with a sound like grinding coins. "You learned to dodge yesterday. You learned to read my hips. That is the first step of survival."
He pointed the heavy iron mace directly at her.
"Tonight, you learn what happens when you cannot dodge. When the alley is too narrow. When the enemy is too fast. Tonight, you learn to absorb."
Percy began to close the distance, his heavy boots echoing like a war drum against the stones.
"Pick up your sword, Maya," the Black Knight commanded, his icy blue eyes locking onto hers with terrifying, uncompromising intensity. "And pray your bones are stronger than your pride."
Maya stared at the flanged head of the iron mace. It didn't gleam. It was a dull, utilitarian grey, pitted with age and the memory of crushed bone.
For a brief, naive second in the hospital room earlier, she had genuinely wondered if the System had secretly unlocked that Courtly Etiquette skill for her. She had read her father's nervous guilt and the battered roommate's suffocating terror so clearly, as if their emotions were written in a glowing font above their heads.
But standing here, the freezing wind of Avalon biting through her leather gambeson, the truth settled over her like a bucket of ice water. That hadn't been magic. That was just Arthur. Thirty-two years of navigating passive-aggressive bosses, unhappy landlords, and the quiet miseries of public transit had taught him how to read a room. Combined with the original Maya's deep, empathetic intuition—honed by years of watching her mother silently fracture under the weight of medical bills—she didn't need a cheat code to understand human suffering. She was just human.
Which meant she had absolutely no magical safety net right now. Just a fragile body, a block of wood, and a ghost who was about to cave her ribs in.
"Are you completely out of your mind?" Maya's voice cracked, the raw panic bleeding through. She scrambled backward, her boots slipping slightly on the damp stones, and snatched the heavy wooden waster off the ground. "That's iron. I'm holding a stick!"
"It is oak," Percy corrected smoothly, his stride not slowing. "Oak is stubborn. But if you hold it flat against the iron, it will snap, and you will die. So, you must convince the iron to go somewhere else."
He didn't blur into motion this time. He just lunged.
It was a heavy, brutally direct overhead strike. The mace whistled as it displaced the cold air, coming down toward Maya's left shoulder.
She couldn't dodge. He had angled his approach to trap her against the closest weapon rack. She gripped the thick wooden handle with both hands, muscles screaming in sudden protest, and threw the waster up in a rigid, horizontal block, exactly like she had done the day before.
The impact was a localized explosion.
The iron flanges bit deep into the oak. A horrific, jarring shockwave traveled straight down the wooden shaft, violently slamming into Maya's palms. The newly formed, yellowish callouses on her hands tore open instantly. The sheer kinetic weight of the blow collapsed her arms, driving her down onto her right knee with a wet thud against the cobblestones.
Her shoulders felt as if they had been wrenched half out of their sockets. She gasped, a high, thin sound of absolute agony, her vision going entirely white for a fraction of a second.
"Wrong," Percy's voice growled from somewhere above the ringing in her ears.
He pulled the mace back, freeing it from the deep gouge it had left in the wood. Maya didn't even have time to check if her collarbone was shattered before he swung again—a wide, sweeping backhand aimed at her ribs.
"Don't take the weight!" Percy roared.
Maya squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't absorb another hit like that. Her joints were already on fire. If she tried to stop it, the wood would break.
Convince the iron to go somewhere else.
She didn't raise the sword to block. Instead, she dropped the tip of the wooden blade toward the dirt, angling the thick shaft at a steep, forty-five-degree slant, and threw her body weight forward, bracing her shoulder behind her hands.
The mace hit the angled oak.
It didn't stop. Instead, with a violent, ear-splitting craaaack, the heavy iron head scraped down the length of the slanted wood. The force of the blow was redirected downward, the mace slamming into the cobblestones inches from Maya's boot, sending a shower of pulverized stone and sparks into the damp air.
Maya stumbled forward, completely off-balance, but her arms hadn't absorbed the full shock. Her bones were still intact.
Percy didn't praise her. He ripped the mace up from the dirt and swung the heavy wooden shaft of his weapon, catching her behind the knees. Maya went down face-first, tasting dirt and old blood as she bit her own lip.
"A slanted roof sheds the rain," Percy said, walking a slow circle around her gasping form. "A flat roof collapses under the snow. You are not a wall, Maya. You are the slope. When a heavier force strikes you, you must provide a path for that violence to travel that does not end inside your body."
Maya rolled onto her back, coughing violently. Her chest heaved, her heart hammering against her ribs with a frantic, terrifying rhythm. Vigor 5. It was better, but she was still running on a half-empty tank. Every movement felt like she was wading through wet cement.
"I... I got it," she wheezed, wiping a smear of blood from her mouth with the back of her wrist. She forced herself to sit up, her arms trembling so badly she could barely keep her grip on the gouged wooden waster. "Slant the roof."
"Get up, then."
The next few hours—or days, or weeks, time was a fluid, miserable concept in the Pavilion—were a masterclass in pain.
Percy was relentless. He didn't swing with his full superhuman strength, or she would have been pasted to the courtyard walls, but he swung with the intent to injure. He mixed his strikes, chaining brutal overheads into sweeping leg-breakers.
Maya quickly learned that simply angling the blade wasn't enough. If she slanted the wood but kept her feet planted, the redirected force still threw her off balance, leaving her wide open for the follow-up strike. She had to pair the block with the footwork she had learned yesterday.
Parry. Slide. Redirect.
Clack!
The iron caught the edge of her wooden sword. Maya twisted her wrists, turning the blade outward, forcing the mace to slide harmlessly past her hip. But she was a fraction of a second too slow on the pivot, and Percy's heavy leather boot caught her in the stomach.
She doubled over, throwing up a mouthful of acidic bile onto the dark stones.
"You stopped moving your feet," Percy observed coldly, resting the head of the mace in the dirt. "You admired your own block. The enemy does not stop when you successfully defend yourself; they simply strike from the new angle you have provided."
"I'm half your size," Maya spat, her voice ragged and hoarse. She wiped her mouth, tears of sheer physical frustration stinging her eyes. She hated this. She hated the cold, she hated the smell of the courtyard, and she hated the fact that she was actively choosing to be beaten to a pulp. "I can't just... spin out of the way of a wrecking ball forever!"
"Then what will you do?" Percy challenged, his eyes narrowing. "Lay down? Die? Let the Chitauri butcher the mother who wept by your bed?"
The mention of Eleanor was a low blow. It was a cheap shot, and Percy knew it.
Something hot and furious ignited in Maya's chest. It wasn't Arthur's calculated pragmatism. It was the original Maya's stubborn, cornered-animal anger—the anger of a girl who had spent five years being told what her body couldn't do.
"Shut up," Maya snarled.
She didn't wait for him to raise the mace. She lunged.
She knew she couldn't hit him. He was too fast, too heavily armored. So she didn't aim for the man. She aimed for the weapon.
Percy brought the mace up in a standard defensive posture, entirely unconcerned.
Maya swung her gouged, splintering wooden sword in a desperate, two-handed arc. But at the very last second, she dropped her center of gravity, sliding her boots across the wet stones, and smashed the thickest part of her waster directly against the wooden handle of Percy's mace, right beneath the iron head.
The impact was bone-rattling. Maya's hands went completely numb.
But Percy's grip, unprepared for a strike aimed at his leverage point rather than his body, slipped. The heavy iron head of the mace dipped violently toward the ground, dragging his arm down with it.
For a split second, the massive knight's chest was exposed.
Maya didn't have the strength to pull her sword back for another swing. Instead, she let go of the waster entirely with her right hand, balled it into a fist, and punched Sir Percy of Scandia directly in the throat.
It was a terrible punch. Her knuckles slammed into the hardened leather of his under-collar, and she was fairly certain she sprained her middle finger. It was like punching a brick wall covered in cowhide.
Percy didn't choke. He didn't even stumble. He just blinked, genuinely startled, looking down at the small, red-haired girl whose fist was currently pressed against his windpipe.
Silence fell over the courtyard. The wind seemed to hold its breath.
Maya pulled her throbbing hand back, her chest heaving, suddenly realizing the sheer, suicidal stupidity of what she had just done. She looked up into the icy blue eyes of the legendary Black Knight, waiting for him to retaliate by removing her head from her shoulders.
Percy slowly righted his mace. He touched his throat with his free hand, feeling the leather collar.
Then, the corner of his scarred mouth twitched.
"A throat punch," Percy said, his deep voice carrying a strange mix of disbelief and dark amusement. "You abandoned your weapon to deliver a strike that wouldn't have bruised a tavern wench."
"It... it distracted you," Maya panted, taking a cautious half-step back. Her finger was throbbing with a hot, pulsing agony.
"It was an act of profound desperation," Percy corrected. He looked at her, his gaze dropping to her bleeding hands, the sweat plastering her dark red hair to her face, and the stubborn, terrified fire in her eyes.
He plunged the iron head of the mace into the dirt.
"But you attacked the weapon, not the armor. You found the leverage point. And when the opening presented itself, you did not hesitate." Percy offered a short, stiff nod. "Desperation kills. But controlled desperation... that is the birth of tactics."
Before Maya could ask if that meant the lesson was over, the bruised-plum sky above them violently shattered.
The heavy, metallic chime of the System tore through her skull, overriding the wind of Avalon. The cold cobblestones dissolved into the stiff, starched fabric of a hospital bedsheet. The smell of woodsmoke was instantly replaced by the sterile scent of floor wax and rubbing alcohol.
Maya gasped, her eyes flying open.
She was back in Room 442. The room was dark, illuminated only by the faint, yellow glow of the streetlights filtering through the large window. The digital clock on the wall read 11:45 PM.
Her entire body was a tapestry of deep, radiating aches. Her forearms felt like they had been wrapped in hot lead. But as she lay there, staring at the ceiling, the golden interface bloomed warmly in her vision, accompanied by a cascading series of triumphant notifications.
[Training Cycle Complete: 2 Weeks (Internal Time)]
[Conditioning logged. Analyzing host effort...] [Effort Assessed: Maximum. The Host has grasped the fundamentals of kinetic redirection and unconventional leverage.]
[Reward Granted: +15 Vigor EXP, +10 Might EXP]
[Milestone Reached: Skill Level Up!] [Footwork & Stance: Novice -> Apprentice] Description: The Host's evasion is sharper. The passive kinetic evasion buff increases to 15%. When wielding a weapon, the Host can now passively mitigate up to 10% of blunt-force impact damage through structural redirection.
Maya let out a long, ragged exhale that ruffled her own bangs. She closed her right hand into a fist. It ached fiercely from punching the knight's collar, but the joints didn't feel as terrifyingly fragile as they had yesterday.
She turned her head slightly. The privacy curtain was still drawn. From the other side, the battered girl was breathing evenly, lost in a deep, medicated sleep.
The sound of soft, rubber-soled footsteps approached in the hallway.
Maya quickly let her eyes droop to half-mast, relaxing her posture, sinking back into the illusion of the helpless cardiac patient just as Nurse Davis quietly pushed the heavy door open.
Davis checked the telemetry monitor from the doorway, her face illuminated by the green glow of the screen. Seeing the steady, rhythmic lines of Maya's heart rate, she nodded to herself, jotted something down on her clipboard, and slipped back out into the hall, the door clicking softly shut behind her.
Maya lay in the dark, the golden glow of the System fading back into her periphery.
She had survived the mace. She had survived the night. And she was fifteen minutes away from the System reset, ready to start the brutal, impossible grind all over again.