Chapter : 769
The world of velvet and silk, of grief and shadow, dissolved in an instant. His mind was flooded with a perfect, luminous, and terrifyingly clear X-ray-like image of the child’s entire body, a divine schematic revealing every cell, every organ, every secret the invisible sickness held.
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The diagnostic scan was not a simple image; it was a living, multi-layered torrent of information. Lloyd’s mind, augmented by the System and his own eighty years of experience as a genius engineer, processed the data with a speed and clarity that was beyond human. He was not just seeing the boy’s body; he was reading it, page by intricate page, line by devastating line.
His perception plunged through the layers. He saw the skeletal system first, a delicate, bird-like frame of pale, ivory light. He noted the subtle demineralization, a sign of the long-term nutritional deficiencies caused by the illness. He saw the muscular system, a network of faint, shimmering fibers, atrophied and weak from months of inactivity. He saw the circulatory system, the sluggish, almost stagnant flow of blood through the arteries and veins, the heart itself a tired, struggling muscle, beating with a fluttery, arrhythmic rhythm.
The data was a cascade of confirmations. The boy was in a state of systemic collapse. His body was shutting down, organ by organ, system by system. The Royal Physicians, with their crude, external methods of observation, had seen the symptoms—the fever, the lethargy, the paralysis—but they were like men trying to understand a storm by looking only at the fallen leaves. Lloyd was seeing the storm itself, the very engine of the boy’s destruction.
He focused his perception deeper, moving from the macro systems to the cellular level. He scanned the major organs—the liver, the kidneys, the spleen. All were inflamed, struggling under a massive toxic load. But they were not the source. They were victims, not perpetrators.
He moved his focus to the boy’s nervous system, the shimmering, silver river of life that controlled every function of his body. He traced the great trunk of the spinal cord, following its branches as they spread throughout the boy’s limbs. He saw the creeping paralysis here, a strange, dark static that was slowly, inexorably smothering the silver light of the nerves, cutting off communication between the brain and the body. Still, this was a symptom, an effect. He was hunting for the cause.
Finally, he directed his scan to the boy’s chest cavity, the very core of his being. He peeled back the layers of the ribcage, his perception phasing through bone as if it were glass. He looked at the lungs, expecting to see the tell-tale signs of the same pneumonia that had afflicted the weaver’s son. But they were clear. Inflamed, yes, but not filled with fluid. This was not an infection. This was something else. Something worse.
His gaze settled on the heart. It was a valiant little muscle, fighting a losing battle. And then, nestled deep within the chest cavity, just behind the heart and pressed against the delicate tissue of the left lung, he saw it.
And the breath caught in his own throat.
It was a darkness. A formless, asymmetrical cluster of cells that did not belong. They were not glowing with the healthy, soft light of the surrounding tissue. They were a patch of absolute, malevolent blackness, a void in the luminous map of the boy’s body. They were voracious, aggressive, and they were growing, sending out small, spidery tendrils that were wrapping themselves around the great vessels of the heart and invading the tissue of the lung.
The tumor.
The word formed in his mind, a cold, hard piece of knowledge from another world, another lifetime. He recognized it instantly. The chaotic, uncontrolled cellular division, the invasive, parasitic nature of the growth—it was a classic, malignant neoplasm. A cancer.
His [All-Seeing Eye] sharpened its focus, analyzing the very structure of the dark cells. He saw their corrupted, mutated nature. He saw how they were hijacking the boy’s own circulatory system, creating a network of blood vessels to feed their own insatiable hunger. He saw how the pressure of the growing mass was constricting the heart, causing its arrhythmic beat. He saw how it was pressing on the major nerves that ran down the spinal column, causing the creeping paralysis. He saw how the toxins it was releasing into the bloodstream were causing the systemic inflammation and the persistent, low-grade fever.
All the disparate, confusing symptoms, all the baffling signs that had stumped the kingdom’s greatest healers, they all snapped into a single, terrifying, unified diagnosis. The sickness was not invisible. It was just hiding. And he was the only person in the world who had the eyes to see it.
Chapter : 770
The scan had taken perhaps fifteen seconds of real time. He withdrew his perception, the luminous, terrifying world of the boy’s inner biology dissolving, replaced once again by the dim, grief-choked reality of the sickroom. He took his hand from the boy’s forehead, his face a mask of serene, scholarly contemplation. But inside, his mind was reeling.
This was a catastrophe.
His entire plan, his brilliant, intricate deception, had been predicated on the assumption that the boy’s illness was something he could actually cure. A rare infection, a spiritual imbalance, a complex but treatable ailment. He had come here prepared to be a miracle worker.
But this… this was a death sentence.
In his world, on Earth, with 22nd-century medical technology, this would have been a difficult, high-risk case. It would have required a team of surgeons, advanced imaging, chemotherapy, radiation—a whole arsenal of scientific weapons that did not exist here. Here, in this world of herbs and magic, a tumor of this size and aggression was not a disease. It was a god of death, an absolute, unbeatable foe.
A wave of genuine, cold despair washed over him. He had walked into this house with the arrogant confidence of a master strategist, so certain of his own superior knowledge, so sure he could control the outcome. And the universe, in its infinite, cruel irony, had just handed him an unwinnable hand.
He could lie. He could create a fanciful story, perform some mystical-looking ritual with his powers, and then declare that the boy was beyond even his help. He could retreat, leave the family to their grief, and his cover would remain intact. It was the logical, strategic move.
But as he looked down at the small, frail child, at the innocent, sleeping face, he found that he could not do it. The sliver of compassion that had been growing within him, the part of him that was becoming the doctor, rebelled. He could not just walk away. It was a tactical weakness, a sentimental folly that could destroy his entire mission. And in that moment, he didn't care.
He had promised Sumaiya that he would try. He had promised this desperate family that he would look. He had to do something.
He straightened up, his face a mask of calm, professional gravity. He turned to Sumaiya, who had been watching him with a breathless, hopeful intensity.
“I know what it is,” he said, his voice quiet, but filled with a new, heavy finality. “It is not a sickness of the spirit, as I had theorized. It is something far more tangible. And far more dangerous.”
He looked towards the great wooden doors, behind which a broken king and a grieving queen were waiting for his verdict. He was about to give them a diagnosis from a world they couldn't imagine, and then he was going to have to offer them a cure that was, by all rational measures, utterly and completely impossible.
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The heavy doors of the sickroom swung open with a soft, funereal groan. Lord Qadir and his wife, Zira, were standing in the corridor, their faces pale, expectant masks of hope and dread. The two Royal Physicians and the master alchemist stood behind them, their expressions a mixture of professional skepticism and a grim, almost eager anticipation of his failure. They looked like a panel of judges, ready to deliver a sentence.
Lloyd met their collective gazes, his own expression a carefully composed mask of somber gravity. He gave a slight, respectful bow of his head.
“My Lord, my Lady,” he began, his voice calm and measured, a stone of certainty in the turbulent sea of their emotions. “I have completed my examination.”
“And?” Lord Qadir’s voice was a low, rough growl, a sound of profound impatience. “What is your grand diagnosis, slum doctor? What curse have you invented for us? What new demon have you discovered?”
“It is not a curse, my Lord,” Lloyd said, his voice cutting through the lord’s bitter sarcasm with a quiet, unshakeable authority. “Nor is it a demon. It is not an imbalance of the humors, nor is it a simple ague of the spirit. What afflicts your son is something far more… mundane. And far more insidious.”
He paused, letting the weight of his words settle, deliberately building the tension. He was no longer just a healer; he was a storyteller, and he was about to introduce a new monster into their world.