The air inside the cottage was thick with bitterroot and wormwood, hanging dense in his lungs like the guilt that never seemed to loosen its grip. Dr. Aldric Faulkner sat hunched at the edge of a low wooden stool, the crooked bend of his back echoing the slow curve of time that had collapsed around him. A pot of feverfew boiled gently over the hearth, letting off sharp wisps of oil-laced steam. It smelled like burning grass and medicine—not unpleasant, but not welcoming either.

He stirred it with one hand, the other wrapped around the worn head of his cane. The wood creaked in rhythm with his breath. The pain in his leg had settled into its usual dull throbbing—persistent but familiar, like an old friend that refused to leave.

He hadn’t spoken aloud in days.

Only the scrape of his tools and the murmuring wind outside kept him company, and even they seemed tired. No one came this far north unless they were desperate or already dying.

Better that way.

People meant questions. Questions meant remembering.

His eyes, pale and restless beneath the rim of his mask, drifted to the corner of the cottage where his satchel lay packed. Rolled bandages. Clay pots filled with black salve. A bundle of dried marigold and valerian root. A fresh cutting of foxglove—dangerous if mishandled, but sometimes the heart needed scaring to remember how to beat.

He grunted as he stood, his left leg dragging slightly, the cane biting into the wooden floor with a dull clack. The mask sat waiting on the table, its long beak curved downward like a bird caught mid-dive. Some days, he hated the thing. Claustrophobic; a cage of leather and glass. But it kept the rot from his lungs, or so the scholars claimed. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Didn’t matter anymore.

He slid the mask over his face.

The world shifted. Smells dulled. Vision narrowed. Breath rasped against the linen filters. He tightened the straps with slow, practiced movements, the same way he used to help his son tie his shoes—before the fever took him screaming in the middle of the night. No incense had masked that smell. It never really left.

Outside, the wind clawed through the trees, spitting frost off the branches like angry teeth. His boots sank into the frozen dirt as he stepped from the doorway, breath curling out of him like smoke from a dying fire. The path to town was narrow, choked with roots, and unforgiving to his limp.

The townsfolk would spit when they saw him. Some crossed themselves. Some cursed him under their breath. Others—those who had watched their children sleep without fever for the first time in days—nodded.

Small things, quiet things. But they made the cold bite just a little less.

He'd make it to town before dusk. There were three sick in the southern quarter—a mother and two sons. Black swelling under the arms. Heat in the chest. One of them had coughed blood. He would do what he could.

God won't save them, he thought, trudging forward. But I might. Or I’ll hold their hands when they go. That’s more than most get.

The trees parted ahead like old bones shifting, and the edge of the village came into view. Smoke rose from chimneys. A dog barked once, then fell silent.

He tightened his grip on the cane.

“Let’s see who’s still breathing,” he muttered, voice muffled behind the beak.

And with that, the doctor entered the town—silent and cloaked in black.