The mountain wind carried the scent of smoke and ash. The world below was burning.

"Klaifor, what the hell did you do?"

The words came out rough, half-choked by disbelief. The other plague doctor stood motionless, the long beak of his mask turning slowly toward his companion. The black lenses reflected the glow of the distant fires, glinting like the eyes of a vulture circling over the dying.

"You told me I needed to cause a worldwide epidemic," Klaifor said, his tone disturbingly calm. His voice rasped behind the mask — mechanical, muffled, and utterly detached.

The wind howled between them. Below, cities crumbled. Figures staggered through the streets, coughing, collapsing, reaching for air that no longer healed them.

"I told you we needed control," the first doctor hissed. "A warning, a demonstration, not—" He gestured toward the chaos below, toward the spreading sickness that devoured borders, that seeped into every breath. "—not this!"

Klaifor tilted his head, the feathers of his hat trembling with the breeze. “Control,” he repeated softly. “You can’t control a cure… nor a plague. You only release it.”

He took a step closer, the leather of his coat creaking in the cold. The faint gleam of vials dangled from his belt — each one filled with a faintly glowing, sickly green liquid.

"You wanted to remind humanity of its fragility," Klaifor continued. “So I reminded them.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Only the distant cries reached them — thousands of voices merging into one endless, desperate wail.

The other doctor clenched his fists. “You’ve doomed them all.”

Klaifor turned toward the horizon, watching the smoke rise like black serpents into the dying sky.

“No,” he murmured. “I’ve purified them.”

The mask turned back, and from behind those empty glass eyes, the faintest sound came — a dry, humorless laugh.

“Now,” Klaifor said, stepping past him, “it’s your turn to find the cure.”