"The past was sick. The future brought the cure."
Scene 1 – Death Comes to Brimvale
Three days after G-Rock dropped the first medieval hit, the rhythm of Brimvale broke.
It started in whispers.
A cough.
A fever.
A farmer collapsed face-first into his breakfast, stone-dead before the eggs cooled.
Then another.
And another.
By sunset, the village bell rang three times — a sound that turned hearts to ice. Everyone knew the signal. Plague.
They called it different names.
"The Rotten Black," croaked an old woman clutching her rosary of bones.
"It's the rats," growled a guard, swinging at shadows.
"We are cursed," wept the village priest, gripping his trembling hands so tightly they turned white.
Panic surged like a flood. Doors slammed shut. Streets emptied. Smoke spiraled from hurriedly burned bodies. The fear wasn't just in the sickness — it was in the silence.
And in that silence, no one dared say Zayden's name aloud.
Until a small, sick boy stumbled down the path toward the bakery.
Pale. Wheezing. Clutching his chest.
Zayden caught him just before the child hit the ground, blood smearing across the silver of his jacket.
The air seemed to still. The sky itself felt heavier.
Zayden looked at the boy, then straight ahead, jaw set like stone.
"M.A.I.A.," he said calmly, but firmly. "Run a bio-scan. We've got a pandemic."
---
Scene 2 – Future Medicine, Meet Medieval Fear
The back of the bakery had already become a workshop, but within minutes, Zayden transformed it into something else entirely — a glowing, humming pop-up med lab.
Blue holograms flickered across walls of raw brick and timber. Scanners swept over the boy's body, casting soft rings of light with every pass.
M.A.I.A.'s voice filled the room.
"Pathogen confirmed: Yersinia pestis. Commonly known as bubonic plague. Fatality rate: approximately 80%. Medical knowledge in this era: effectively zero. Current fear level: severe."
Zayden's face darkened. His fingers moved swiftly over his wristpad, eyes hard.
"They'll blame me," he muttered. "They always blame what they don't understand."
"Then help them understand," M.A.I.A. replied.
From a side hatch in his capsule, a small metallic drawer slid open. Inside — a single, silver syringe. Glowing faint blue. Packed with nanos that shimmered like stars.
Zayden knelt and injected the boy.
"Hold on, kid," he whispered. "The future's not done with you yet."
---
Scene 3 – The Stand Against the Plague
Morning arrived on slow, anxious wings.
Zayden stood alone in the village square, bathed in cold daylight. His silver jacket reflected the dawn like armor. Around him, silence — broken only by the wind and a dozen terrified whispers.
The villagers stood at a distance, faces hidden beneath scarves and shawls. No one stepped forward. No one dared.
The priest approached first, red-faced and shouting.
"You brought this sickness! Your cursed light! Your glowing needles! Your foul inventions!"
Zayden didn't move.
"I brought a cure," he said simply.
He turned — and from behind him, the boy appeared. Clean-faced. Steady. Alive.
Gasps erupted from the crowd. The priest staggered back. A woman sobbed into her apron.
A merchant shouted, "Is it true? Is the boy healed?"
Zayden nodded.
"I'm not a god. I'm just from tomorrow. And tomorrow has medicine."
He raised a metal case, flicked it open. Inside, rows of glowing injectors rested like treasures from another realm.
"This," he declared, "is a mobile clinic. I'm vaccinating everyone. Right now."
---
Scene 4 – Resistance and Redemption
The silence that followed felt like it might snap in half.
A sword scraped free of its sheath.
Sir Garrick Ironvain stepped beside the priest, broad and armored, one hand resting on his blade.
"This… is unnatural," he said. "You put spirits in our blood?"
Zayden locked eyes with him.
"No," he said, his voice quiet but steady. "I put hope in it."
A moment passed. Then another.
The knight stepped forward.
And held out his arm.
"Then give me some hope."
The crowd broke.
They surged forward — not with torches, but with tears. With arms outstretched. With trembling hope.
One by one, Zayden scanned, injected, and cured them. Each shot delivered without pain. Each wound sealed with light.
By sunset, the plague was finished before it had truly begun.
History didn't remember that day as the Black Death.
It remembered it as the day death was stopped.
---
Scene 5 – The Fire That Followed
Beyond the woods, on a cliff overlooking Brimvale, firelight flickered.
A robed messenger knelt in a clearing, surrounded by mounted riders in black and gold. At the center, a woman stood in gilded armor, her face hidden behind a lion-engraved helmet.
"He cured the Rotten Black," the messenger reported. "Not with herbs. With metal. With light. With… something we've never seen."
The woman did not move for a long time. Then, slowly, she turned to the others.
"Then he is not just dangerous," she said. Her voice was low, cold, and sharp enough to draw blood.
"He is rewriting fate itself."
She raised her sword high.
"The Council of Crowns will move."
---
Scene 6 – Zayden's Reflection
That night, Zayden sat atop his bakery roof, legs stretched out, back against a chimney, eyes on the stars.
The boy lay nearby, curled in a heat-insulated future-blanket, snoring softly.
The town below was silent now — not from fear, but from peace.
M.A.I.A. broke the quiet with a gentle tone.
"Today, you saved 212 lives. Also, the village has unofficially declared you their Guardian Star."
Zayden let out a soft laugh.
"Not bad for a guy who was failing pre-med back home."
He stared into the sky.
But behind his smirk, his eyes were serious.
"Saving lives…" he said quietly, "might just get me killed."
The wind shifted.
Out on the edge of the world, something stirred — old powers waking, old guardians whispering.
But for now, the village breathed easy.
For now, the world was healing.
And tomorrow?
Zayden would build hospitals.
---
End of Chapter 4
Next Chapter: Chapter 5: CoreMed Begins