KIRA

The treatment was exactly as unpleasant as the healer promised.

Twice daily, a compound that tasted like ash and copper and something else I couldn't name — something that made my teeth ache and my vision swim for twenty minutes after each dose. The healer called it a chelation protocol. My body, she explained, needed to be convinced to release what it had been quietly accumulating.

"It will feel worse before it feels better," she told me on the first night, watching me breathe ...