The overlay vanished.
Dom sank deeper into the ice.
Lucy closed her laptop.
“You handled the skeptics well.”
“They weren’t wrong to doubt. I’d doubt me too.”
“You’d doubt yourself?”
“I’d think I was full of it.” He shifted, ice clinking.
“The collab will help, though. Someone else sees what I see, confirms it’s real. Then the skeptics either believe it or they don’t. Either way, I did my part.”
Lucy nodded.
“Any idea whom you’d collab with?”
“Nope, but I’m guessing the internet will figure that out before I do.”
An hour later, Doc Joe arrived.
He took one look at Dom’s knee, swollen, grinding, bone-on-bone, and grimaced.
He did what he could: anti-inflammatory salves, a fresh wrap, basic healing that sealed the surface damage and other injuries in his body but couldn’t touch the deeper ruin.
“The cartilage is gone, Dom. I’ve told you before. You need a real healer.”
“You mentioned you could find me one.”
Joe was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Yeah. One in particular, his name’s Samuel Cross. Level 502. Saint-class support. One of the best healers in the Midwest.”
“A Saint?”
“You need a Saint. At Level 500, their class unlocks an ability called Miracle. As long as the patient isn’t dead, they can heal anything. Regrow limbs. Rebuild organs. Reconstruct joints from scratch. It’s the pinnacle of healing magic.” Joe paused.
“Cross is expensive though, and he doesn’t take new clients. But I saved his daughter’s life years ago during a dungeon extraction. He owes me. I can call it in.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
Joe pulled out his phone and stepped into the hallway.
Dom could hear the murmur of conversation, Joe’s voice, low and insistent, then a pause, then the sound of reluctant agreement.
When Joe came back, he was nodding.
“He’ll see you. Today. Before eight tonight. His clinic’s in the Medical District, private facility, discreet. He’s clearing his afternoon schedule as a favor to me.” Joe handed Dom a card with an address.
“It’s going to cost you forty thousand. Don’t make me regret this.”
Dom took the card.
“I won’t.”
Joe did what he could for now: basic healing, anti-inflammatory salves, a fresh wrap for the knee.
Dom paid him five hundred dollars for the house call.
Joe tried to refuse.
Dom insisted.
“Take it. You’ve been patching me up for years. This is the least I owe you.”
Joe pocketed the cash.
“You’re different, kid. Something changed.”
“I got lucky.”
“Luck doesn’t look like that.” Joe gestured at Dom’s ears, at the apartment, at the laptop still glowing with the Q&A metrics.
“But whatever it is, keep doing it.”
Before Joe left, Dom asked the question he’d been avoiding.
“My mother. Mana Congestion Syndrome. Can Cross do anything for her?”
Joe’s face changed.
“MCS is degenerative, Dom. It’s not an injury. It’s a breakdown at the cellular level. Even Miracle can’t fix it. The only thing that can reverse that kind of damage is an Elixir. A full cellular reconstruction.”
“Where do I get one?”
“You don’t. Elixirs are legendary. The ingredients are rare, the synthesis is dangerous, and the people who know how to make them are either dead or in hiding.” He paused.
“There’s one person in Chicago who might be able to help. A woman named Morgan. Retired master alchemist. Level 520. She runs a tea shop in Old Town now. But if anyone in this city can synthesize an Elixir, it’s her.”
“Morgan,” Dom repeated.
“Tea shop. Old Town.”
“Don’t just show up at her door. She’s difficult. She’s earned the right to be. Let me reach out first, see if she’ll even consider talking to you.”
“Appreciate it.”
Joe nodded, picked up his bag, and left.
Vince returned near evening, and he was practically vibrating.
“The good news.”
“I sold everything. It moved faster than anything I’ve handled in years.”
“And the great news?”
“The staff is at auction. Bidding started at fifty thousand. It’s at eighty-two and climbing. The Flame Core is in the same auction, should pull another twenty or thirty. You’ll have the final numbers in five days.” He set a tablet on the table, showing the breakdown.
“After my eighteen percent and the scout’s twelve, you’re sitting at three hundred and fifteen thousand. I’m transferring it to your account.”
Dom stared at the number.
Three hundred fifteen thousand dollars.
In one day.
From one gate.
“Keep an eye out,” Dom said.
“More gates. Even unstable ones.”
“I was going to suggest the same thing. You’re good at this, catboy. Whatever weird thing happened to your system, it’s working. But don’t get too greedy.”
The clinic was in the Illinois Medical District, a quiet street of private practices and specialist facilities that catered to hunters who could pay for discretion.
Samuel Cross met him at the door, a tall, gaunt man in his fifties with silver-streaked hair and hands that looked too delicate to belong to someone who performed miracles for a living.
“Joe tells me you’ve been walking on a destroyed knee for years,” Cross said, leading Dom to an examination room.
“Let’s see what we’re working with.”
The scan took thirty seconds.
The holographic projection of Dom’s knee showed exactly what Joe had described: complete cartilage loss, bone spurs, chronic inflammation, microfractures that had never healed properly.
“You should be in a wheelchair,” Cross said flatly.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Luckily I can fix it. You’ll have the knee of a twenty-one-year-old, which, conveniently, you are.” He paused.
“It will take two hours. And it will cost you forty thousand dollars.”
“I’m good to proceed.”
The procedure was the strangest sensation Dom had ever experienced.
Cross’s hands glowed with warm golden light as Miracle activated, and Dom felt his knee healing.
Not the dull ache of a potion or the sharp sting of a battlefield mend, but a deep, thorough reconstruction.
Cartilage knitting together.
Bone smoothing.
Tissue regenerating.
Dom felt it spreading.
Past his knee.
Up through his thigh, into his hip.
Then further, a warmth that radiated outward, chasing through old injuries he’d long since stopped thinking about.
All of it unraveled under the light, the damage erased, the tissue made whole.
“You’re lucky Joe called in his favor,” Cross said quietly.
“I don’t do this anymore. Not like I used to.”
“Why not?”
“After a while you get tired of deciding who gets to live or die. Especially when the people who even need it don’t have access.” His voice was calm, but there was something old and heavy behind it.
“Every organization and their priority list.”
“So now you charge forty thousand dollars.”
“My very availability incited recklessness. So now I charge enough that people only come to me when they truly need it.” The light in his hands pulsed.
“And occasionally, I heal someone because an old friend asks nicely. Normally you’d have had to wait a few months. You’re the first person Joe’s ever called in his favor for. You must be worth it.”
When it was over, Cross told him to stand.
Dom stood.
His knee didn’t scream.
It didn’t grind.
It didn’t buckle.
He took a step.
Then another.
Then he walked across the room and back, feeling the smooth, silent motion where there used to be grinding pain.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
“Don’t waste it,” Cross said.
“That body will hold if you take care of it. No more ignoring injuries. Keep in mind that you’re not invincible just because someone rebuilt your joint.”
“I believe the line is ‘go and sin no more.’ Or something like that. I never was much for scripture.”
Dom snorted.
“Did you just quote Jesus?”
“I performed a Miracle on a broke hunter who walked in here on a destroyed knee and walked out whole. I think I’m allowed.” Cross’s expression didn’t change, but there was something almost warm in his eyes.
“Don’t make me do it again. My rates go up for repeat customers.”
“I hear you, sir.”
Dom walked home.
No limping, just the steady rhythm of his own footsteps on the pavement, the city lights reflecting off the winter-wet streets, the ears perked forward instead of drooping.
Dom felt like a bird let out of his cage.
Even the air smelled different for no reason.
Lucy was waiting at the kitchen table.
She looked up when he came in, and her eyes went straight to his leg.
“You’re not limping.”
“No.”
“You’re really not limping.”
“You already said that.”
She stood up and hugged him, fierce and sudden, the way she used to when they were kids, and he’d come home from his first dungeon runs.
He hugged her back, feeling the warmth of her against his chest, the faint tremble in her shoulders.
Her fingers dug into the back of his jacket, her face pressed against his shoulder.
When she spoke, her voice was thick, muffled by the fabric.
“I thought you were going to die last night.”
“Lucy—”
“I watched the whole stream. When you went down, and the chat started screaming, I thought—” Her voice cracked.
“I thought that was it. I thought I was watching you die while I sat here and couldn’t do anything.”
Dom held her tighter.
“I’m okay.”
“You weren’t okay. You had an arrow through your arm. Your ribs were cracked. You could barely stand. And then Vince explained what an unstable gate actually was and I realized—” She pulled back just enough to look at him, her eyes red, tears streaking down her cheeks.
“You could have just been gone, Dom. The gate could have collapsed, and I would have just been sitting here waiting for you to come home, and you never would have. I would have lost you and Mom in the same year.”
“Hey.” He cupped the back of her head, pulling her against his shoulder again.
“I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t.” He held her tighter.
“But I’m still here. And I’m not just patched together anymore. I’m actually fixed. All of it.”
Lucy pulled back, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
“Everything?”
“Everything. I feel like I’m twenty-one again.”
“You are twenty-one.”
“You know what I mean.”
She let out a wet, shaky laugh and punched his arm weakly.
“You’re an idiot.”
“I know.”
“And you’re still going to do dangerous things.”
“Probably.”
She wiped her eyes again, her breathing slowly steadying.
“Then you’re taking me with you next time. Not into the dungeon. But somewhere close. I’m not watching you almost die from our kitchen table ever again.”
“Deal.”
Lucy pulled back, her eyes wet.
“Good. Now we need to fix Mom, and pay off Dante.”
“We will. Joe’s reaching out to someone who can. Let’s wait for his update.”
Lucy nodded.
She didn’t push.
She just squeezed his hand and let go.