Infectio

There are some diseases you can not cure. Even if it cost me my last breath, I will purify my body with the blessing of fire. Lisen to me lord; as my last comand I will save my people from this curse. Death is the most infectious disease of all

“Sub masca, nullus homo est certus.”

Under the mask, no human is safe.

You are a physician of a broken age.

By oath and by fear, you serve behind a beaked mask, where breath turns sour and truth rots beneath cloth and bone. The sick come to you at dusk and at dawn — coughing, whispering, weeping — their bodies marked by signs no scripture dares to name. Some carry fever. Some carry crawling things. Some carry silence where a soul once stirred.

Your duty is to observe, to judge, and to act.

With no knowledge but what your eyes may steal and your hands dare to touch, you must discern illness from curse, contagion from deceit. A wrong remedy is not mercy — it is a sentence. The cured may yet return, changed. The untreated seldom do.

But the plague shows no reverence for rank nor robe.

As the day wears on, the affliction does not wait its turn. Each patient leaves something behind — on your gloves, in your breath, beneath your skin. You may feel it growing, but there is no time to answer it. The line does not stop. The bell keeps ringing.

Only when night falls and the doors are barred do you face yourself.

Then, by candle and by trembling hand, you must examine your own flesh, weigh your symptoms, and choose which malady to purge and which to endure. For some illnesses may be borne alone — two will not be forgiven. A single grave corruption, left untouched, is death by morning.

There is no sanctuary here.

No cure without cost.

No mask thick enough to keep the rot away.

In this place of flesh and judgment, you are healer, examiner, and subject alike.

And when the bell tolls, it tolls for all —

even the one who holds the cure.