Florence, 1348 AD
The city was a charnel house. The stench of death and lime was a physical presence. Enki, his immunity a hidden curse, worked alongside a plague doctor named Bernardo. The man's beaked mask and waxed robe were a pathetic armor against the Black Death.
The city council, desperate, offered Bernardo a fortune in gold florins to treat only the ruling families in their fortified palazzos. It was the logical choice. Save the powerful, preserve the structure.
Bernardo listened, then shook his head. "My oath is to the sick," he said, his voice muffled by the mask.
What followed was not a battle against the plague, but a war against despair. Bernardo's herbs and potions were useless. He knew it. He offered no cure. Instead, he moved through the pestilential streets, rich quarter and slum alike. He held the hands of the dying. He listened to their final, rattling confessions. He wrote letters for those who could no longer hold a pen. He was not a healer of bodies, but a physician of souls, offering the only medicine that mattered in the face of the ultimate, indifferent system of death: a human presence in the absolute darkness.
Scrapbook Entry: "In the face of the machine of mortality, one man chose the illogical, inefficient path of companionship. He could not stop the dying, so he honored the living. He offered his own humanity as a poultice for their terror. This is the antibody to Control. Not a system, not a cure, but a simple, stubborn act of being there."