Chương 8: Triage

Priya took control of the chapel without a speech, she just effortlessly seemed in charge while people were injured. Within ten minutes, everyone who had been bitten, burned, cut, clawed, or exposed to unknown mana had been examined and assigned a category. Thomas did not know the formal names of those categories, but he suspected his was somewhere between 'probably fine' and 'stop making it worse'. His side wound was shallow but not trivial. The burns along his arm and ankle were stabilising.

His mana reserve had settled, but Priya made it clear that any further attempt to draw ambient mana without an immediate need would be treated as both a medical problem and a personal insult. Chloe received the same warning and looked personally betrayed by the idea that she was not allowed to experiment with Mana Control yet. Amy followed Priya from person to person with the focused relief of someone finally handed instructions that made sense. Her Healer class was limited, but Priya wasn't disappointed.

She gave Amy a string of direct jobs: clean wounds, manage pain, watch for dizziness, check bandages, and call for her if anything changed. By the time Priya finished, Amy wasn't hovering at the edge of the group anymore; she looked like medical staff. Marcus let Priya clean the cut above his eye without complaint. He answered her concussion questions in the same clipped voice he used for everything else, but there was something flat beneath it now. The fight had ended. Mercer and Clarke were still dead.

Sitting down had not changed either fact. When Priya finished, she held his gaze a little longer than she had with anyone else.

"You need sleep."

"I will sleep, as soon as everyone is safe." Priya looked at him for another second, then moved on to Gareth. Marcus picked up his pistol again and returned his attention to the doorway, as though the room was easier to survive when he had something to watch. Eleanor had been writing on the back of a visitor leaflet. Her handwriting was tight enough to look carved.

"We need to organise around what everyone can do," she said. She pointed the pen at herself first.

"My class is Estate Steward. It helps me take stock of supplies, organise work, and understand the condition of a place I care for. I'm unclear on what "under my care" means now. I managed this site before today, but the castle feels different since the System arrived."

"How?" Thomas asked. Eleanor looked at the chapel walls.

"The building itself seems more present. It's not talking to me, but it's like the information is written on the walls. When I think of the chapel as a shelter, I know the entrance is the weak point. I know the window is too narrow for the hounds we ran from. I know the walls are sound. I know ten people can stay here for a night, but not comfortably and not without better sanitation."

"A shower would be amazing," Marcus agreed. Eleanor accepted that with a short nod, then looked to Margaret. Margaret had been sitting with her hands folded in her lap, thumbs worrying at each other." Homesteader. Food, water, storage, household supplies, making things last, organising a place where people live." She paused, clearly trying to find better words and not quite liking any of them.

"I can feel when something nearby belongs to that. Not everything, and not in exact amounts, but I knew where the emergency water was because we started using this room as a shelter." Will looked at her.

"You didn't say it like that before."

"Well, I didn't quite understand it like that before, honey." Eleanor wrote something down.

"Could you help me estimate how long supplies will last?"

"Yes," Margaret said.

"If I can see what we have."

"And if we get to the kitchen, storage, offices, staff rooms?"

"I think so." Chloe raised one finger.

"Also farms, I'd imagine." Will's hand tightened around Margaret's.

"We need to go home," Will said. Margaret closed her eyes.

"Will."

"Our son is there. His wife is there. Cattle don't feed themselves, and pigs sure as hell don't wait politely for food just because the sky's gone strange." No one answered right away. Thomas had not thought about animals. That felt stupid now. Of course there were animals. Farms did not stop being farms because magic had arrived and ruined everyone's afternoon.

"The sheep are in the lower field," Will continued.

"If the fences are down, if those things got out, if something got in—""If the fences are down, walking eleven kilometres in the dark will not fix them."

"Our daughter is in Leeds."

"And we are not. We need to focus on the things in front of us first." Will looked away. For the first time since Thomas had met him, the big man seemed smaller. Not weak. Just pulled in too many directions at once.

"I'm not leaving them," Will said.

"No one said you were," Margaret replied, softer now.

"But if we run out there with a bench and a fire poker, we may never reach the farm. Then we help no one. If this place can be made safe, even for one night, then tomorrow we can think."

"Tomorrow may be too late."

"It may," she said.

"But tonight is impossible." Nobody rushed to fill the silence after that. Marcus did not intervene. Eleanor did not either. Thomas was grateful for both decisions. Will and Margaret weren't really arguing about tactics. They were arguing about the awful fact that love didn't make eleven kilometres any shorter. Priya finished wrapping Gareth's burned wrist.

"A healthy adult walking on a clear road might manage four or five kilometres an hour. Slower in the dark. Slower with injuries. Slower if the roads are damaged. Much slower if the world has changed in ways we do not understand yet. That's at least three hours to get home, and it's already six in the evening." She tied off the bandage and looked at Will.

"I'm not taking a side. This is me identifying a stupid way to die." The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Daniel's mouth twitched. Will let out a slow breath.

"Aye." The word wasn't agreement, but it was enough for the room to move again. Eleanor returned to the list. Marcus described Battle Captain in the fewest possible words. Threat assessment. Positioning. Commands under pressure. Coordination. He also confirmed he was the highest level present, tied with Priya. Amy explained Healer again, this time with Priya listening closely. When she finished, Priya reviewed how Amy could help: shallow wounds, pain management, and observation.

Amy repeated them under her breath, like a new mantra for being useful. Eleanor looked at Daniel next.

"And you?"" Guardsman. It's stuff like setting up patrol routes, access points, chokepoints, and keeping people away from danger." Gareth nodded.

"Six years of being asked where the toilets are makes a man knowledgeable."

"Seven in April," Daniel said.

"Long enough to know better than to walk on a burned leg." Daniel glanced toward Priya.

"I believe that point has been raised."

"I will stop repeating it once everyone has learned the lesson," she said. Eleanor added Daniel to her notes.

"You can guide an interior sweep."

"I can walk."

"No strenuous activity," Priya said.

"Guiding is not strenuous."

"Until something jumps out of a doorway," Priya said.

"Then it's sprinting, and your burns tear open. You should stay seated." The room went quiet again before he finally nodded.

"I can guide from behind someone." Gareth spoke next.

"Groundskeeping and maintenance. Stores, the workshop, ladders, service access, exterior doors, shutoffs, drains—the parts of this place tourists never see because they'd trip over history and sue someone." Chloe turned to him.

"Workshop?" Gareth's mouth twitched.

"Equipment, spare wiring, batteries, portable lamps, hand tools, safety gear. If you're doing anything with those cores you told me about, you'll want it."

"I do," Chloe said.

"You are not going there alone," Marcus said.

"I had assumed Thomas would be dragged into the poor decision." Thomas raised a hand halfway.

"I would like the record to reflect uncertainty."

"No," Marcus said. Chloe looked at him.

"No one goes anywhere alone," he clarified. Eleanor wrote that down as if it had always been policy. Then Gareth stopped looking amused.

"What?" Eleanor asked. He looked toward the barricaded doorway, not toward the maintenance corridor they had just survived, but toward the route leading back to the visitor entrance and the grounds beyond.

"King's Gate was open." Eleanor stared at him.

"It was open for visitors. We would have closed it at the end of the day."

"There's no way this day would be considered normal, and I know I haven't closed the gate yet. If it's open, anything in the inner approach can reach the keep. There are other ways in, but that one is closest." Marcus looked toward Daniel.

"Can you guide us through the remaining rooms without Gareth?" Daniel nodded.

"Yes. We just have to be cautious." Marcus rubbed a hand over his face, then stopped halfway, like he had remembered the cut over his eye.

"Fine. I'll take Daniel, Will, Amy, and anyone else who can walk without falling over. We check the rooms we can reach. If someone is alive, we bring them back here. Priority is keeping everyone here alive. Second is finding anyone else out there."

"I should come," Eleanor said.

"You should stay here." She looked ready to argue. Marcus nodded toward the water bottles, the bandages, and the people sitting along the chapel walls.

"They know you. If we find anyone else, this is where we bring them. They need a place that has water, treatment, and someone in charge who is not holding a pistol." That stopped her. Eleanor looked down at her notes, then at Margaret.

"We make this room functional." Margaret nodded, although her eyes remained wet.

"For tonight."

"For tonight," Eleanor agreed. Thomas noticed the phrasing. His life had become a series of moments dedicated to their survival rather than any thoughts about the future. He was still reeling from the whiplash, honestly. Yesterday, his stress centred on research deadlines and his five-year plan. Now, planning for tomorrow felt like hubris. Chloe stood with more enthusiasm than balance.

"Gate team?"

"Gareth, Chloe, Thomas," Marcus said. Thomas had known it before Marcus said his name. Gareth knew the gate and the grounds. Chloe could understand damaged mechanisms, locks, and whatever the System had done to devices and stone. Thomas was the only other person who had displayed any ability to fight off the beasts. Priya looked at him.

"No unnecessary mana drawing." Thomas nodded.

"Only necessary mana drawing."

"I dislike the amount of flexibility in that sentence."

"So do I, Dr Priya." Amy handed Chloe the replacement torch, then seemed to regret giving it up, worried it might be destroyed. Chloe accepted it gently.

"I will try not to destroy this one."

"That's not as comforting as you think," Amy said.

"Well, the world seems to be falling apart. Might have to do with a bit less comfort." Marcus rose more slowly than before. His hand hovered near the pistol without lifting it.

"If you see anything larger than you can handle, come back." Thomas looked toward the barricade.

"That may be difficult if the gate is the problem."

"Then make noise. Shout, break something, set off whatever is left of the alarm systems. Don't die quietly." The words hit Thomas hard. Gareth took a crowbar from the tools he had carried back from the maintenance room, tested its weight, and looked at Thomas and Chloe like he was counting children before crossing a road.

"Stay close. The path to King's Gate is exposed in places, and if the fire has dropped enough for us to move, it has dropped enough for other things to move too." Chloe clicked on the torch. Thomas reached for the bond in his pocket but had not yet summoned the spear. Priya's warning was still sitting under his ribs, right beside the leftover pressure from too much mana. He could refill the reserve now.

He knew that, and knowing it made his hand want to close around the spearhead and test how much easier it would feel this time. That was the problem. He was scared. He was hurt. People were dead. The world had gone insane before lunch was properly over, and still, some part of him wanted to understand how the magic worked. He hated that part a little. They moved the barricade only wide enough for the three of them to pass through. Behind them, the chapel began to feel like safety. Margaret had the water.

Priya had Amy checking bandages. Eleanor was discovering more about the building she had spent the last decade maintaining. Marcus had Daniel pointing at doors on a rough sketch of the keep. It was not a refuge yet, but it was more than they had when the chapel door first closed behind them. Thomas still preferred it to everyone staring at the barricade and waiting to die.

Gareth led Thomas and Chloe through the passage at a careful pace, avoiding the worst of the debris and keeping them close to the wall whenever the route opened toward broken windows or exterior gaps. The blue fire had faded in many places to thin lines along stone joints, but the air still tasted metallic, and more than once Thomas saw pale light moving beneath the old masonry like embers under ash. Chloe swept the torch ahead, using her light to check the corners where something small might hide.

She did not speak much; nobody did. It was eerily quiet outside of the sound of their breathing and footsteps, as if the castle itself was afraid to break the silence. At a narrow turn near the gate approach, Gareth stopped and raised one hand. Thomas froze. Ahead, beyond the shadowed curve of the wall, the night breathed cold through an open space. Not the dry heat of mana flame. No longer the stale air of enclosed rooms.

Outside air, sharp and damp, carrying smoke, trampled grass, and something coppery enough to make his grip tighten around the spearhead in his pocket. Gareth's jaw hardened. They moved the last stretch low and slow, until the approach to King's Gate came into view. The gate stood open. One heavy leaf had been pushed inward, leaving a gap wide enough for several people to pass through side by side. Beyond it, the dark slope outside the castle shifted beneath patches of dying blue light.

Marks scarred the ground where too many feet had crossed recently, and scratches along the lower wood showed where something sharp had tested the surface. For a moment, nothing moved. Then five small figures appeared beyond the open gate, coming up the approach from the wrong side of the walls. Thomas's mind tried to make them children. It did so automatically, desperately, because the shapes were short and narrow-shouldered and moved upright on two legs.

The explanation lasted only until the nearest figure lifted its head and the fading blue light caught the hat pulled low over its skull. Wet red. His stomach dropped before his brain finished making the connection. The thing carried a hooked iron blade in one long-fingered hand. Another dragged something behind it, metal scraping slowly over the stone. Small bodies. Red caps. Iron weapons. Old stories were supposed to stay old. Redcaps should just be stories of small, angry faeries used to scare kids into behaving.

Chloe's voice dropped to a whisper.

"Please tell me those are children." Thomas' hand closed around the spearhead. The nearest one smiled, and the expression cut far too wide across its face.

"Those are not children," he said.