The air outside Uruk was thick with the smell of fear and disinfectant—a pungent brew of vinegar and boiled herbs. Enki stood with a handful of volunteers from Ur, their faces obscured by cloth masks soaked in the same solution. The rest of the caravan waited a mile back, a nervous herd keeping its distance from the plague city.
The gates were not just closed; they were sealed, great timbers braced against them from the inside. A single, small sally port stood ajar, guarded by men whose eyes were hollow with exhaustion and terror.
"We bring food from Ur," Enki announced, his voice muffled by the cloth. "And we speak for the Chancellor, Lulal. We seek an audience with the King."
The guards, recognizing the name of Kur's former apprentice, let them pass. The city within was a tomb. The perfect, silent streets Enki had walked months before were now choked with a different kind of silence—the hush of the sick and the dying. Shutters were drawn. The only sounds were the distant, hacking coughs that gave the plague its name and the low chants of priests attempting to exorcise a sickness no spirit had caused.
They were led not to the throne room, but to the highest ziggurat, where the air was supposed to be cleaner. Kur stood on the observation platform, his back to them, looking out over his dying masterpiece. He did not turn as they approached.
"The prodigal gardener returns," Kur's voice was flat, stripped of its usual arrogant resonance. "Come to witness the harvest?"
"We brought you grain," Enki said, gesturing to the baskets his men set down.
"A poultice on a severed artery," Kur replied, still not facing them. "Your sentiment is as inefficient as your philosophy."
Enki took a step forward, his own Quiet Wrath a low burn in his chest. He let the ghost of Kaelen Vance rise to the surface, his voice dropping into a clinical, precise tone that belonged to neither Sumeria nor this era.
"This isn't about philosophy," Enki said. "This is about triage. You had a dense population center hit with a novel pathogen. Your first response was to lock the doors. You created the perfect incubator. You have the mind for logistics, the model for this is elementary. Mass quarantine without segregated containment zones is just a slower form of massacre."
Kur went very still. Then, he slowly turned. His face was a mask of cold fury, but his eyes held a flicker of something else—shock. The language, the concepts, were a key turning in a lock he thought was his alone.
"You think I didn't know that?" Kur snarled, stepping close. "You think I didn't run the calculations the moment the first case was logged? I had two choices: let it burn through the city and hope the strong survived, or let it out and watch it burn through the entire region, including your precious, vulnerable Ur. I chose the logical option. I contained the damage."
"The logical option?" Enki's voice was dangerously quiet. "You condemned every man, woman, and child in this city to a statistical probability. Lulal's family was in here."
"Lulal made his choice when he followed you!" Kur shot back. "He chose chaos. This is the result. Order, even destructive order, is preferable to the random cruelty of nature. This…" he gestured to the silent city below, "…proves my thesis. Humanity cannot be trusted with its own survival. It must be managed. Controlled."
He stared at Enki, his gaze challenging, brutal. "You stand there judging me from your high horse of 'witnessing'. But you have the mind I do. If you're so righteous, why are you standing out here with a mask on? Why don't you go down there and tell them yourself? Explain viral load and airborne transmission to a potter dying in the street. See how much your 'grace' is worth then."
The words hung in the sterile air between them. It was the unanswerable challenge. The Divine Interdiction that had stopped Enki from helping Lulal was the same force that made a lie of any comfort he could offer the dying here. He could Witness. He could not save.
Enki said nothing. He simply turned and walked away, leaving the food and the King with his ruin. The silence that followed him out of Uruk was louder than any scream. He had gone to confront a tyrant and found, instead, a mirror.