The bells of Saint Marrow tolled twelve times — one for each district consumed by plague.
By the thirteenth toll, the sound no longer reached the slums. The dead did not need reminding.
Ace Valemont stood in the heart of the quarantine ward, sleeves rolled to the elbow, hands slick with blood that was not his own. The air stank of fever and lye. Around him, physicians in bird masks murmured prayers they did not believe. He did not bother pretending.
"Scalpel," he said quietly. The apprentice trembled as he placed the blade in Ace's gloved hand. The instrument caught the light — a flash of silver amid rot. He drew it across the patient's chest in a perfect, measured stroke. No hesitation. No pity.
"Note the reaction," he said. "Twitching even after death — residual nerve activity. A sign of incomplete decay. The flesh still remembers life."
The apprentice swallowed. "You mean he—he was alive when you—"
Ace didn't look up. "He was dying. I simply gave him purpose.". He pressed the blade deeper, eyes cold and analytical. Beneath the ribs, a pale fluid glistened — not quite blood, not quite bile. He smiled faintly.
"Excellent. The reagent survived infection. Send a sample to the lower vault. Mark it as Subject Forty-Seven."
He turned, stripping off his gloves, and addressed the ward like a lecturer before his students. "Gentlemen, remember this lesson: compassion contaminates results. The moment you hesitate, the body lies to you. You must cut while the truth is still warm."
A murmur of unease rippled through the younger doctors. Ace's reputation preceded him — a noble scholar exiled from the Collegium for "inhuman practices." And yet, when the plague began, the Crown had called for him by name.
Now, the royal physicians watched him in wary silence, realizing that monsters make efficient healers. A shadow moved at the edge of the ward — a woman wrapped in a black cloak, her mask shaped like a raven's beak.
"Doctor Duke," she whispered, voice low and sharp. "The shipment arrived. Fresh stock. From the Rosveil quarter."
Ace nodded. "Good. Have them delivered to the west wing. We'll need the lungs intact this time."
She tilted her head. "And the payment?"
He smiled faintly. "Take whatever you like from the merchant's vault. Gold decays faster than flesh."
The woman — Sylene Crowe, his fixer — gave a sly grin and vanished into the smoke.
Ace lingered by the corpse, fingers tracing the incision. The patient's eyes were still open, staring up at the vaulted ceiling painted with saints. Their faces seemed to weep for him. He leaned close and whispered, almost tenderly,
"You should be grateful. Your suffering will purchase salvation."
Later, as night fell over the city, Ace crossed the marble halls of the Valemont estate. Candles burned low, their flames struggling in the chill. In his private laboratory — a cathedral of glass and bone — he set the vial of glimmering fluid on a silver tray beside a preserved human heart.
He studied the heart for a long moment, his reflection rippling in the glass.
"Mother," he murmured, "you believed mercy could heal this world. I will prove you wrong."
He uncorked the vial and let a single drop fall upon the preserved flesh. The heart shuddered once — a faint, impossible pulse — then went still. Ace smiled.
"Progress."