Vitae:

Vitae is the art of holding death at arm’s length. It is not mercy, nor kindness, but defiance made liquid, the bottled will to persist when flesh should fail. True Vitae alchemists know that healing is not creation, only theft. Every wound closed steals from the wounder, every fever cooled borrows from the world’s dwindling warmth. It is magick that insists the body keep lying for just one more breath. The ignorant call it holy work; Those who’ve brewed it long enough call it gambling with time itself. The process demands reverence for balance, too much purity, and the mixture rejects mortal veins; Too little, and it festers, feeding on the life it meant to save. Vitae is not brewed, but persuaded, coaxed from the trembling threshold between vigor and decay. The finest draughts glow faintly in moonlight, a counterfeit halo for the desperate and the damned. Yet even the best of them curdle with age, turning sour, hungry, alive. The wise drink quickly, the wiser never do. For every healer who perfects Vitae, there is another who withers in its pursuit. It whispers promises as it boils, “one life for another”, and most find it hard not to listen. In the poorer wards of Gullsperch, they call it the Alchemist’s Lie, for it never truly heals. It merely trades suffering between hands, ensuring that pain, like wealth, never leaves circulation.