They crowd alongside the fallen body like vultures to the carcass of a scapegoat.

Their fingers struggle, reaching and desperate, towards the husk; she twisted and bloodstained, struggling to breathe, seconds after obliteration as the forces of their descent mangled flesh and bone. No mark of a Receiver resides on her forehead. I can glimpse pale, panicked eyes behind the paralyzed mask of agony, between the reaching hands of those hungering for heath. The fallen has but seconds to live, as torment after torment besieges them. Her few moments left of her mortal presence have been stolen by those who would pain her last gasps of the bitter, smoky autumn air, in exchange for the cure to their afflictions and plagues. I am ashamed that my own fingers are outstretched among them.

I cannot tear a path into the swaying horde fast enough to gift her one last respite from the torture of her being rending apart. The fear in her eyes flickers and dies.

My hands falter, bearing still my offering. Congenital analgesia. The condition that deprives you of pain. I have accumulated seven over the years, to give as a last solace to the dying. I remember in vivid detail the terror chiseled in their faces as they turn towards me, expecting from my palms another illness to accompany their last hour. From this one I had been spared the look of the accusing; she was not the first who I had failed, but she was the first whose eyes I had not closed, whose face did not bear remorse towards me.

I turn away and breathe the air she could not.

I feel the poison coiling within my systems now. My time has grown limited. I reach for the small vial of dye in my pocket, frigid glass pressing smoothly against my fingertips, and draw with it the silver mark of a Receiver upon my forehead. The toxin throbs beneath it.

The eyes of the swarm swivel towards me; a glinting sea of jewels, blue and green, brown and gray.

I, too, will take your burdens.