The forest outside Valea Corbului was silent, heavy with mist, yet something in the air pressed down on Ezio di Valerio's chest. He woke abruptly, the taste of iron on his tongue, heart hammering. His cabin, usually quiet at dawn, smelled of something else—something foul, coppery, alive with decay.
A moan drifted from the doorway.
Ezio's hand shot to the kitchen knife on the table. Through the slats of his window, he saw a figure staggering toward him—a villager, eyes wide and unseeing, body bloated with fever, skin mottled and pale. The crowding fog and the shadows of the timber walls turned it into something otherworldly, something undead.
He didn't hesitate. A quick step forward, knife driven into the temple. The moan stopped.
Another came. And another. Each staggering figure was driven by fever, delirium, and instinct, blind to reason, yet dangerous as any predator. Ezio moved through the cabin like a shadow, each motion precise, silent. Behind his beaked mask, he measured his breathing. Herbs stuffed inside would filter the miasma creeping in from the village.
The knife, his hidden small axe, and the double scythes he had carved long ago were all he had. Yet in his hands, they were enough. Each strike ended a life already half-lost to disease, yet each one weighed on him. These were no monsters of myth, but men and women consumed by the plague, walking corpses in the eyes of the terrified villagers.
When the last figure fell, Ezio didn't pause to mourn. He pulled aside a loose floorboard, revealing the trapdoor he had built long ago. His hidden cave. The air smelled of moss, damp stone, and smoke—his sanctuary from a world gone mad.
He climbed down, brushing dust from his leather gloves, and began dressing. Layers of dark leather, stitched tight; a feathered cape draped over his shoulders; the crow-like plague mask fitted snug over his face. He tested the balance of the double scythes, checked the hidden small axe, and loaded the blackened crossbow with fire and poison-tipped bolts.
The village above was no longer a home. It was a battlefield, a tomb. But somewhere in the smoke and fog, there might still be survivors. He would find them. He would save them.
Ezio stepped into the shadows at the cave's mouth, his boots muffled by moss and fallen leaves. A low wind carried the smell of rot and ash from the village below. Every shadow could conceal the delirious, the infected. Every sound could signal an attack.
He tightened his grip on the double scythes. He was alone. He was hunted. He was the hunter.
And in the early light of Autumn 1348, the Crow Doctor vanished into the Carpathian forest, stalking the undead, driven by knowledge, fear, and a grim determination to survive.