The next sunrise came with heavy mist hanging over the fields. Everything looked soft and quiet, like the world was holding its breath after what had happened. Emily stepped outside and breathed in the damp air. Her hands still trembled from the day before, but her heartbeat was steady. The fear had not left, but it had changed shape. It was no longer the wild kind that made her want to run. It was the solid kind that told her to keep moving, to prepare.

The square was empty except for Hart, who was already standing near the well, his coat dark with dew. He nodded at her, his usual morning greeting. She nodded back. No words were needed.

Lila appeared soon after, sleepy but determined, carrying a bucket almost as big as she was. Emily smiled and took it from her before the girl dropped it. “You don’t have to work every morning,” she said, but Lila shook her head and replied, “If I don’t work, people die slower.” Emily laughed soft. “That’s not exactly how it works, but close enough.”

They spent the first hours in silence—boiling water, cleaning cloth, checking the few patients who had slept inside. The man she had treated the day before, the one with the knife wound, was sitting up now, pale but alive. He looked at her like he still could not believe it. He asked no questions, only whispered, “Thank you.” She nodded and said, “Remember what I told you—keep it clean, no dirt, no touching.” He nodded like a student caught cheating.

By midmorning, the village was awake again. The air filled with movement: animals, children, the sound of hammers and voices. Life was always quick to return. But Emily noticed a strange distance between people when they looked toward the trees. The riders were gone, but their shadow still hung in the air.

Hart came to her as she scrubbed the table outside the clinic. “They will come again,” he said. “Maybe not the same ones. But word spreads. Everyone knows now there is a healer who makes the dying live.”

Emily wiped her hands and looked up. “That’s not a secret I can hide,” she said. “You can’t unteach what people have seen.”

Hart nodded, then hesitated, his face thoughtful. “You make people strong. You make the village safe. But safety makes envy.”

She understood right away. Power draws attention. Even good power. Especially good power.

She thought about that while she worked. It was true: every life she saved, every sickness she stopped, made her more visible. And every success was another reason for someone higher to want her under their control. She had been through that before—hospital directors cutting her hours, doctors taking credit for her work, rich donors using her name for speeches. Same pattern, new world.

So she began to think differently. She started to plan for something beyond herself.

That afternoon she called the women together—the ones she had taught, the ones who watched her work and copied her movements. She gathered them behind the clinic under the shade of the old tree where children liked to play.

She drew three lines in the dirt. “Here,” she said, pointing to the first, “washing. Here,” she said, pointing to the second, “bandage. Here,” she said, pointing to the third, “water.”

Lila translated the few words they didn’t know. The women listened close.

Emily took a deep breath. “You’ve all seen what happens when people wait for me to come. There are too many of you and only one of me. That has to change. If I get sick, if I’m gone, you must still know what to do.”

They looked uneasy. One woman said, “But you know more. You are the healer.”

Emily shook her head. “No. I’m just the first. You can be next.”

She handed out cloth pieces and sticks, showing how to wrap, how to clean, how to cool. She made them practice until it became muscle memory. Some were clumsy, but some were quick. One of them—a tall, quiet woman named Mira—had perfect control. Emily smiled. “You’ve done this before?” she asked. Mira shrugged. “I used to help animals. They don’t talk back, but they still hurt.”

Emily liked her right away.

By evening the women had worked until their hands were sore. They laughed, tired but proud. Lila clapped and said, “We are nurses!” Her accent made the word sound almost like music. Emily smiled wide. “Yes,” she said. “You are nurses.”

When night came, she sat alone again with her notebook. The fire burned low. The pages were full of short lines, each one a memory of a day that had changed something small. She added new lines:

Taught four women to dress wounds.
Mira strong hands good judgment.
Village calmer after riders left.
Hart building stronger doors for clinic.
Need more clean cloth.

She stopped, pen hovering over the paper. Then she wrote another line she almost didn’t want to see:

I am being watched.

She didn’t know if it was paranoia or truth. Maybe both. Every time she looked toward the hill, she thought she saw movement—a flash of light like sun on metal. Maybe scouts, maybe just her mind playing tricks.

She closed the notebook and stared into the fire.

Lila was asleep again in the corner, small and peaceful. The clinic was quiet except for the sound of slow boiling water and the crackle of the fire. Emily whispered to herself, “This is what I wanted—a place that lives.”

But the thought of tomorrow made her uneasy. Being needed meant she could not stop. Being trusted meant she could not fail.

When dawn came again, a knock came at the door before sunrise. Hart’s voice was quiet. “Someone from the hill,” he said.

Emily stood, heartbeat fast. She opened the door to see a man she had never met before. He wore fine clothes, cleaner than most, and carried a letter with a red seal. He bowed slightly—not mockery, not threat, real respect. “The governor requests your presence,” he said carefully. “Not command. Request.”

Hart stepped forward, his expression sharp. “For what reason?”

The man hesitated. “His wife is with child. The healer is needed.”

Emily’s breath caught. A birth.

For a second she forgot the danger. She thought of every delivery she had ever seen, the miracle and the terror of it. Here, without tools, without sterile rooms, without backup, one mistake could mean death for two lives.

But she nodded. “Tell him I’ll come.”

The man looked relieved. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “He sends escort.”

When he left, Hart turned to her. “You sure?”

Emily looked toward the hill, the line of trees, the fading night. “If I refuse, they’ll come and take me again. If I go, I go on my own terms.”

Hart studied her long and finally nodded once. “Then we go together.”

She smiled faint. “I was counting on that.”

She went back inside and looked around the clinic one more time—the shelves, the fire, the lines drawn in the dirt. The women she had taught would be enough to keep things alive for a few days.

She ran her hand along the doorframe, feeling the rough grain under her palm. “You’ll hold,” she whispered. “You’ll keep them safe.”

That night she didn’t sleep. She sat by the fire and watched it burn low to ash. Her thoughts ran far ahead into tomorrow—to the governor’s mansion, to the danger waiting there, and to the life she would have to save no matter who it belonged to.

Outside, the mist thickened again, wrapping the village in silence. The air smelled of smoke and rain.

Emily whispered one promise to herself, the same one she had whispered since the night she woke in this strange world.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she said softly, “but as long as I am, no one dies if I can stop it.”

And somewhere in the dark beyond the fields, someone was listening.