TELOS TOU KOSMOU // Callahan X Reader

1

When the festival to honor Sofos had been announced, you were told that it was a good thing - and the public had believed it. When the head of the worship had stood on the balcony next to the caesar and preached to everyone what was going to happen, he had framed it as the hope you needed in these trying times. It was a cry of faith to the gods who had been so silent for so long - a reminder that the city still stood, and it's people were still alive.

It had been a break, in the moment. You lost yourself for a night, forgetting the strife of being just on the line of poverty and diving headfirst into the festival. You had participated in the processions and the lighting of the altars and the chanting of prayers - and then you had gone home, feeling much better than you had in weeks.

With the way things had been going, you should have known it wouldn't last.

In the three weeks since the festival, a plague had eaten away at the heart of the city.

Even in your chosen profession as a healer, you had never seen anything like it before. It set in fast - within hours people would be falling to the ground, overrun with symptoms. They were feverish, wracked with shivers and dizziness enough so that they had trouble standing. It was hard for people who had contracted it to keep food down no matter what it was. The most disturbing part about it though, was the fact that just before the patient would die, their eyes would roll back into their skull.

The healers were calling it the milk-eye disease because of that nasty effect. Among the gentry though, they reverently referred to it as the silver death.

You were sure it had come from the festival in the honor of Sofos - an opinion shared by many, though for differing reasons. Those more inclined to the religious aspect of things thought it was a curse from the gods - a punishment for wasting resources on a festival in a time of need (an unwise decision in the name of Sofos). You, yourself, were more inclined to believe it was from the sheer amount of people that had been sharing food and wine and water that night, all crowded together where the illness could spread freely.

The 'why' part of it wasn't the important part though - you were more focused on figuring out how to stop the damn thing from killing more people than it already had. It was bad enough that the city guards had been dragging the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation out in the morning - now it was carts and carts of milky-eyed citizens, not just the poor.

"Y/N- we've got another one!"

You cursed under your breath as you got up from where you had been eating, re-tying the strip of white fabric you had taken to wearing around your nose an mouth (something that had become common around the healing center you worked in - a precaution against the disease spreading to any of the healers), and heading back into the main part of the building, searching for who had called you.

Rows of sleeping rolls laid out on the floor covered most of the space, each of them home to a patient who had come seeking a cure - some in better condition than others. Your eyes scanned down the rows of your sick friends and neighbors, looking for who needed your attention - and found it down the way, where one of your co-workers (Zahar) was huddling next to an old woman.

You hurried over, crouching down on her other side. The stench of the illness invaded your nostrils, even though they were covered. "What's wrong?"

Zahar just looked at you, a grim expression printed across his brow.

Your eyes slipped down to the old woman between you, zeroing in on her eyes. Her pupils were gone, rolled back into her skull, leaving only the white expanse behind. You had been trying a few different herbal salves to at least stave off the disease for a while, but it seemed none of them had worked.

Your hand dropped to her pulse, feeling the faint heartbeat there. "She's still alive."

Zahar's eyes fell back to the woman, flooded with sympathy. "If you can still hear us, don't be afraid." He said, taking her hand and squeezing. "Amartia will have you now."

Your fingers still resting on her pulse, you could feel when the woman stopped breathing, her body falling slack and stagnant. You pulled back, guilt flooding your system as you stared down at her body. You had tried your hardest to save her, but it hadn't been enough. There wasn't enough known about this disease yet, and the healers were getting stretched too thin...

Logically, you knew you really couldn't have saved her. That didn't make watching her die sting any less.

Zahar reached forward, sliding the woman's eyes closed. For a moment, you were both quiet. You watched as Zahar bowed his head, murmuring a quick prayer over the woman before rising back to his feet.

"I'll go grab one of the guards from the street." He said. "You alright?"

You rose to your feet as well. "Yeah." You said. "I'm alright." You were used to it by now. The first week or so, seeing people drop dead in the middle of your workplace had given you nightmares. Now, you thought it was more alarming how quickly you had adapted to it. "I'm going to go finish eating."

"Sure." Zahar said. "I'll see you in a few."

With that, you nodded before heading back to the separate room in the healing center - once simply a place to dry and store herbs, now turned into something of a multi-purpose room. It wasn't large, but it had become the place where the healers ate, cried and even occasionally slept.

You let a few tears soak into the fabric of your mask now as you sat back down to finish eating.