Guardian of the Stolen Cure

Bluze slams into the apothecary, ash and daylight spilling in behind him. Shelves rattle, glass jars clink, and the old room goes still except for a hard scrape from behind the counter.

An elderly man rises just enough to aim a handmade crossbow over the counter. His hands shake, but the bolt stays lined up on Bluze's chest.

A faint rattle of boots and shouted orders drifts in from the street. The boy clings closer to Bluze, glancing from the crossbow to the back room where medicine boxes sit in shadow.

Bluze’s challenge hangs in the dusty room. The old man’s bolt wavers a finger’s width, not dropping, but no longer certain.

The apothecary swallows, glancing once toward the back room shelves, then back to Bluze’s chest as if measuring the cost of every breath.

The boy steps half a pace forward, palms open, voice small but steady.

For a beat, the crossbow lowers a fraction. The old man’s eyes shift to the boy, then to Bluze again, and his jaw tightens with reluctant recognition.

Bluze drives both fists into the warped doorframe. Dry plaster bursts loose, the hinges scream, and the rotten wood caves inward with a crack like a gunshot.

Dust blooms across the shop. The old apothecary jerks back from the counter, crossbow snapping up again, while the boy flinches at the blast and steadies himself on the broken threshold.

From the back room, a shelf rattles hard enough to spit a bottle onto the floor. Somewhere deeper in the building, a thin static squall coughs from a dead headset and dies.

The apothecary’s jaw tightens, but he angles the bolt aside, not fully lowered, and points toward the open gap Bluze has made.

Bluze keeps the door broken open while the old man weighs him and the boy in the dust-thick light. The crossbow stays up, but the barrel drifts off-line as the apothecary’s eyes flick to the child’s shaking hands.

The apothecary snorts, then reaches under the counter with his free hand. He does not lower the bolt, but he slides a chipped inhaler and a rolled bandage into the open where Bluze can see them.

Behind him, the back-room shelf rattles again. A thin hiss of static leaks from the dead headset and cuts out. In the counter’s cracked mirror, Bluze catches a glimpse of a narrow cabinet marked with a faded red cross.

The old man tips his chin toward the cabinet, then toward the boy, leaving the choice hanging in the dusty air.

Bluze eases back from the doorway and lets the apothecary take the lead. Dust sifts down through the broken frame as the old man steps in close to the boy, crossbow still in hand but lowered to a wary angle.

He sets the inhaler on the counter, then takes the boy’s wrist and looks him over with quick, practiced fingers. The chipped bandage follows, unrolled and ready.

The old man’s face softens by a fraction as he notices how Bluze keeps the entrance covered without crowding him. Behind the counter, the red-cross cabinet sits open now, its shelves half-empty but real.

He presses the bandage into place with careful hands, then glances up at Bluze. His own breath catches on a small wince as the boy flinches, and a smear of dust marks the counter where the inhaler has already been uncapped.