Dusk
As the blood-red sun sank below the horizon, only a dim, flickering twilight remained. With the onset of night, stars and the moon arrived, accompanied by the vast expanse of the darkened sky.
A grey and white mist rose and swirled, blanketed by feather-like snowflakes that gently descended, enveloping the entire neighborhood. In an instant, the world was reduced to a dance of grey and white.
Amidst the pitch-black silence of numerous shops, a small, unremarkable clinic remained illuminated, seemingly open around the clock.
A young woman in a white lab coat was casually seated by the window. Her amber-hued, deep golden eyes reflected the warm glow of the lamp as she stared unfocused at the chaotic snowfall outside, exuding an aura of tranquility and serenity, reminiscent of a masterful oil painting.
The drifting snowflakes always stirred memories of the past.
Fran rubbed her brow, unable to suppress the emergence of distant recollections.
At that time, she had yet to arrive in the perilous, cursed city of Norlington, a relic of the past fraught with danger…
——
When she first came to this place, Fran was about twenty-four years old, a typical student in an eight-year direct doctoral medical program.
Before being recruited by a nebulous "system" that had taken the form of mist, she had gone by another name, one that did not even belong to a girl.
Fran was a name she casually adopted upon her arrival, inspired by a renowned figure from a science fiction narrative. However, this name had been retained for so long that it gradually became indistinguishable from her true identity.
Having adapted and become familiar with her current name and role, her previous identity lost its significance, and it seemed unnecessary to discuss it further.
It is worth mentioning that Fran possessed a rather unique personality—one that could aptly be described as eccentric.
Her professional skills were exceptional, standing out among her peers in clinical medicine. She seemed to harbor an innate passion for the intricate networks of nerves, the tangled bones and blood, and the pulsating organs.
What would evoke visceral revulsion in most became a source of delight for her—even fascination—to the extent that her former mentors regarded her as the luminous ideal of their teaching careers.
Yet this peculiar individual harbored an absurd, often ill-timed sense of humor. She could, for instance, regale bystanders with witty quips while meticulously repositioning organs during surgery, her remarks eerily aligned with the macabre task at hand.
A healthy intestine can realign itself after extraction and reinsertion. The human body works in marvelous ways, doesn't it?
Fran neither lacked companionship nor escaped being labeled an oddity. Indifference shielded her from such trivialities, though the nuisance of navigating superfluous social bonds wearied her—a tedious chore compared to the austere purity of academia. A pompous, bureaucratic superior obsessed with trivialities repelled her far more than any cadaver.
It was no wonder graduates considering medicine were often warned: "Foolish child, flee while you can!"
Here, in her clinic nestled within the Mistveil District, she practiced with unconventional freedom—conducting minor experiments on patients, evading zealous hunters from fanatical cults who branded her a heretic. These very acts, paradoxically, liberated her truest self.
Monstrous abominations, bloodthirsty sects, disease and death permeating every shadow—surviving these daily threats only deepened her reverence for life's raw vitality.
——
[Dear Dr. Fran, this month's emergency consultation has been activated. Patient: 'Haidra Moira,' Funerary Attendant of the Secretshunter Order. Begin treatment immediately. Time until expiration: 10 minutes.]
"Sending a case now? How delightfully sadistic of you."
A pale, slender hand pushed open the clinic door against the howling gale. Fran stepped into the street, vanishing into the swirling eddies of snow—a lone figure dissolving into the maelstrom of grey.
She lifted her medical kit with suture-stitched fingers, rubbing the faint shadows beneath her eyes.
"Well… Can't quit anyway," she murmured with a resigned sigh, her figure dissolving into the snow-laden haze.
——
Pulsating viscera, frenzied tentacles thrashing wildly, and blazing infernos defying the blizzard's wrath—
A once-ordinary alleyway had become a purgatorial crucible.
Haidra stood amid a mound of human and abominable corpses, mechanically squeezing her pistol's trigger. Her obsidian nun's habit billowed and settled, revealing a slender waist cinched by form-fitted leather armor. Staccato muzzle flashes illuminated her chestnut eyes—now hardened to flint—and the grotesque, contorted faces surrounding her.
Darkness reclaimed the world as each burst of light died, leaving only the cacophony of laughter and the wet rip of steel-jacketed rounds shredding flesh. A crimson rain of gore pattered onto the snow.
In moments, Haidra emptied her magazine, each bullet a precise verdict delivered to its target.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Spent casings chimed against the frozen ground like harp strings plucked by winter's breath.
With a flick of her habit, she holstered the twin hand cannons at her hips. In their place, antique folding knives with carved wooden handles appeared in her grip—their blades whispering of forgotten wars.
The alley floor glittered with discarded brass and abandoned magazines. Her final cartridge spent, the time for ranged combat had ended.
"Five abominations remain."
The knives became a blur of silver. Two foes—their torsos mutated into writhing tentacles—were cleaved with geometric precision. Cubic flesh chunks slid into the congealing sludge below, their impacts echoing like macabre applause.
"Three." The count rasped through Haidra's ragged breaths, frayed at the edges.
Her third wave of exhaustion crested—muscles trembling, bones screaming—her body teetering at the brink of collapse.
A flick of her wrists sent twin blades hurled into the gale. They whistled through the air like damned souls before embedding themselves between the brows of two assailants, steel teeth splitting frontal bones to pierce the pulsing gray matter beneath.
"One remains—"
The lurking abomination struck from shadowed filth—a tentacle-armored monstrosity bereft of humanity. It slammed her into the mire, its putrid breath a suffocating fog. Ribs snapped like glass rods beneath the crushing weight as the creature's serrated maw lunged for her throat.
Haidra moved faster.
Her dominant hand seized its writhing neck before the jaws fully distended, fingers clawed deep into tentacle-wrapped muscle, nails gouging grooves into the spinal column.
"By the blood of the hunt, I pledge this slaughter. Die with me—even in hell, I'll kill you anew."
The prayer ignited action. A hidden injector sprung forth from her spinal armor, plunging a crimson vial into her veins. Serpentine veins bulged beneath corded muscles as raw power surged—
—and with a wet crack, she ripped the abomination's skull free, trailing a glistening tapestry of nerves and arteries.
A hollow exhale. The pallid spine clattered to the ground like discarded trash. Her relief vaporized into frost as coughing seized her—violent, wet convulsions that tore fresh blood from the gaping wounds in her chest. Crimson torrents saturated the nun's habit and leather armor, an unstoppable tide as her knees buckled into the sludge.
"So… ends here," Haidra coughed, blood flecking her lips. "How… unsporting."
Her body lay broken amidst carnage and coagulating filth—a marionette with severed strings. Organs faltered, muscles liquefying into grotesque slurry.
The biochemical frenzy that had fueled her battle-lust—transforming her into something more vicious than the cult's own abominations, yet precise as clockwork gears—now exacted its price. Cells devoured themselves in final metabolic riots, the last stimulant injections accelerating the collapse.
No amount of blade-honed discipline could armor mortal flesh against these horrors. Frailty, thy name remained humanity.
Coldness seeped into marrow as consciousness fragmented. Darkness swarmed her vision—until a spectral figure emerged from the blizzard's veil.
"Evening, Sister! Burning the midnight oil too? Fancy some pro bono healthcare? No HMOs involved, promise~"
"Silence equals consent, yes?"
...
Fran surveyed the slaughterhouse tableau—meat-pulp that might once have been human, obsidian blood icing the rubble-strewn ground. A brow arched.
"Modern clergy sure multitask—night shifts, high-risk labor. Do heretic-hunting benefits include workers' comp, I wonder?"
The doctor crouched, gloved fingers already probing wounds with clinical detachment.
Visceral perforations. Shattered ribs. Near-total muscular disintegration—and oh, acute epinephrine toxidrome to top this symphony of ruin.
Fran snapped open her medical case, retrieving a bone saw whose steel teeth gleamed with ominous intent. The blade's growl vibrated through the storm as she positioned it above Haidra's sternum.
A thick whirr-thunk sundered leather armor and linen. The nun's blood-smeared torso lay exposed—a canvas of trauma framed by precision steel. (Far more efficient than buttons, Fran mused.)
"My my… A veritable Athena sculpted in flesh."
Even prepared, the physician caught her breath. Moonlight glazed Haidra's sweat-sheened skin, illuminating the warrior's topography—abdominal ridges like marble striations, a warrior's taper from ribcage to hip. Such anatomical poetry begged for study, but time hemorrhaged faster than arterial spray.
Gloves snapped over scarred hands. A lenticular scalpel materialized between her fingers as vials of unnamed chemicals clinked into formation.
"Field conditions demand efficiency," she announced to the blizzard. "Definitive surgery can wait. Now then—"
The scalpel hovered.
"—let's render this R-rated."
——
Mistveil Clinic
Dawn pried at Haidra's eyelids. She winced at the light—and the peculiar sensation of fingers tracing her abdominal sutures.
This isn't the afterlife. Unless hell has… morning rounds?
The fog of lingering drowsiness shattered. Instincts surged—steel-trap reflexes overriding reason.
Haidra's eyes snapped open, her hand already clamped around the stranger's throat. The slender column of flesh beneath her palm pulsed like captive prey, delicate enough to give even this warrior pause.
"Who? Where?" The questions cut through the sterile air—terse, edged with controlled menace.
"Fran. Physician of this establishment." The white-coated figure tilted her head, unperturbed. "Mistveil Clinic, North District 13, Norlington. You're quite… vigorous for someone who should be comatose."
Moonlit hair cascaded to the doctor's waist, threaded with braided silver filaments. Amber eyes glowed like trapped cognac—a face sculpted for Renaissance portraiture, marred only by the sutures crawling across her neck and fingers like necrotic lacework.
"...Why here?"
"I dragged your eviscerated corpse through a snowstorm after that cultist skirmish. Nearly ruptured my aorta doing so." Fran's smile sharpened. "As for your miraculous recovery—trade secrets. Purchase the premium care package, and I'll consider divulging."
Haidra's grip tightened fractionally. "Your hands."
"Appreciating your splendid serratus anterior and obliques." The physician's fingers traced muscle striations with sacrilegious admiration. "Purely clinical, I assure you. My professionalism is... impeccable."
Fran retracted her hand with surgical grace, fingertips lingering a heartbeat too long. She blinked up at Haidra with saccharine innocence—a wolf playing housecat.
"Your procedure concluded flawlessly. One final treatment severs our professional rapport. Might I suggest," her throat pulsed against restrained steel, "releasing your grip, dear Sister?"
"Or shall I itemize an assault surcharge?"
"…Apologies."
Haidra's fingers uncoiled slowly, every tendon protesting. Survival instincts etched through years of bloodshed still screamed threat assessment—yet this stitched porcelain doll radiated no malice.
"Graciousness becomes you, but unnecessary." Fran's voice sweetened to customer-service cadence, crisp as a checkout counter clerk. "If all patrons possessed your… diplomatic restraint, my workload would evaporate."
A parchment materialized between them. "Your itemized invoice. And do initial the postoperative regimen—utterly vital for my records."
Haidra accepted the document, hesitation weighting her movements. Not financial dread, but the gnawing enigma of resurrection. As a funerary attendant versed in mortality's thresholds, she'd catalogued her own certain demise:
Viscera teetering on collapse, further ravaged by adrenal overdoses. Organs failing mid-combat. A necrotic latticework of wounds perforating flesh…
Cardiac arrest. Alveoli flooded crimson. Rib shards skewering viscera—injuries that would beggar even the Secretshunter Order's finest medicae.
Yet this stitch-wrought physician had... resurrected her?
Haidra's gaze fell to the invoice trembling in her grip:
[Pharmaceuticals: 50.10]
[Bedrest: 5.04]
[Nursing: 40.00]
[Corpse Relocation: 1000.00]
[Surgical Fees: 50.00]
[Augmentics: Secondary Heart (xenograft), Osteo-Enhancement (synthetic), Myofiber Weave (synthetic), Hemopoietic Organ (xenograft). Total: 10000.00]
[Palpation Discount (Prime Specimen): -10000.00]
GRAND TOTAL: 1145.14 NORLINGTON SILVER
MISTVEIL CLINIC
ATTENDING: FRAN HESSEL
"Sign here for auspicious closure~" Fran proffered a fountain pen, palms pressed in mock piety. "Complimentary follow-ups included! Fully tax-deductible!"
The nun's stoic mask held firm, though her mind reeled:
Why presume I wouldn't question exorbitant cadaver transport fees?
Since when do back-alley clinics perform multi-organ augmetics?
Her fingers brushed abdominal sutures—neat surgical glyphs where gaping wounds once yawned.
"Self-dissolving sutures of my own formulation," Fran chirped, gesturing at Haidra's torso. "No removal required. Scars? Our dermal refinement services await your patronage."
The nun glanced at her hospital shift—pristine cotton at odds with battlefield pragmatism. "My vestments, Doctor?"
"Ah. Here." Fran produced the cleaned habit from an oak cabinet, its leather cuirass meticulously repaired with surgical-grade whipstitching. "Regrettable damage during emergency access. Discounts remain regrettably absent."
Haidra nodded, shedding the gown with warrior's nonchalance. Fran's eyelid twitched at the revelation of twin folding knives and obsidian revolvers secured beneath the nun's corset.
"Perhaps... 1145 silver as gesture of goodwill?" The physician's smile strained at the edges.
"Full sum suffices." A platinum pendant bearing an ocular sigil and Haidra Moira inscription changed hands. "The Secretshunters will remit payment. Return this via their courier."
"Honored to serve~" Fran executed a flawless curtsy as the nun retreated from her commercial overtures. "Until our next... clinical encounter."
The farewell hung oddly medicinal in the dawn-lit chamber.
Coinless transactions suited battlefield convalescents—no sane soul hauled 1,145 silver through monster-ridden streets. The Secretshunters' ecclesiastical credit stood unassailable; their promissory notes traveled faster than plague.
"Your convalescence remains incomplete." Fran's smile acquired pharmaceutical sharpness as she slid a vellum across the counter. "Select your denouement."
[Option I: Proprietary Biomimetic Elixir (oral)
Assures symbiotic integration of implanted systems (cardiac, osseous, myofascial, circulatory).
Risk Assessment: Null.
"Harmony through biochemistry."
[Option II: Intrathecal Infusion - Codename PALE TEMPEST
- Preposterous physical augmentation
- Mastery of 14 esoteric armaments
- Terminal velocity immunity
Risk Stratification: Catastrophic
"Gale-force evolution."
[Option III: Intrathecal Infusion - Codename ASHEN LEGACY
- Mortality defiance without humanity erosion
- Patellar dysfunction (chronic)
Risk Stratification: Catastrophic
"Phoenix tax applies."
[Finale: Unshackled Praxis
- Unlimited potential (and perforated ethics)
Annotation: Trial equals termination.
"Physician's discretion: thrillingly fatal."