Fallen Angel

Prologue

Night. A medieval city is gripped by plague.

Deep inside an old monastery, a vast improvised hospital has been set up. Dozens of patients lie beneath heavy stone vaults. Candles and braziers burn, steam rises from cauldrons, and medicinal herbs dry on the beams. Figures in long dark robes and raven masks move among the people: plague doctors.

They can already do what the rest of the city cannot.

They separate patients, pass instruments through fire, boil water and cloth, mix medicines, wash wounds, record symptoms and trace who has been in contact with whom.

And people begin to survive.

He taught them these things.

At the centre of the hospital stands a raised stone platform. Once, it was the monastery's altar.

Now a fallen angel stands upon it.

He looks less like a heavenly deity than an ancient, weary warrior. Worn dark clothes, traces of old wounds, immense black wings. Some feathers are charred, with bare dark shafts showing through. His wings are heavy and imperfect, as though he truly once passed through fire.

His faithful raven is beside him.

Large and almost coal-black. For now it sits on the edge of a stone table among open books, vials and surgical instruments.

The doctors know that the raven accompanies the angel everywhere.

It flies above the infected city, is the first to spot new outbreaks, and always returns to its master.

A belief has already taken root among his students:

If a black raven appears above a doomed house, the Teacher is already on his way.

To the angel, though, it is no omen.

It is simply his old friend.

On the stone table before him lies a man stricken with plague.

The angel does not preach.

He teaches.

He shows how to examine a patient, treat an infected wound, which signs to look for and what must never be done.

Several doctors stand close by.

One assists him.

Another holds the instruments.

A third hurriedly writes down every word in a huge handwritten book.

The raven walks calmly across the open pages.

No one dares shoo it away.

But today, more than students have gathered around the platform.

Doctors from other parts of the city have come to the hospital. Some are still without masks. They stand among the patients and watch people they thought doomed remain alive.

One by one, they step closer.

And then something happens that the angel never commanded.

The first doctor kneels before him.

A second followed.

Then a third.

One physician removes his raven mask and lays it on the stone before the Teacher.

The others do the same.

A circle of black masks gradually forms on the floor before the angel.

Thus the first oath is born.

They promise to preserve the knowledge they have received.

To pass it on.

To go where others flee.

To save people regardless of their birth, faith or power.

And to follow the Teacher's path even when the Teacher himself is no longer beside them.

The angel is silent.

He did not found an Order.

But an Order is forming around him.

Behind the kneeling doctors, one student is already drawing a new sign in charcoal on the old monastery wall: an immense black wing.

Beside it, another adds the small silhouette of a raven.

Someone begins copying the oath into a book.

Someone distributes identical raven masks to the new brothers.

Beyond them, in the vast hospital, work never stops for a moment.

Some save the sick.

Others learn.

Still others already teach those who arrived later.

Knowledge begins to spread without the angel's involvement.

And that is what makes this moment truly matter.

He taught a handful of people.

Now those people can teach hundreds.

The angel looks at the doctors kneeling before him.

He could order them to rise.

He could tell them he is no saint.

That the raven is only a raven.

That his knowledge is no revelation.

But he says nothing.

The raven flies from the table and settles on his shoulder.

Below, dozens of people raise their heads.

Before them are the angel's black wings, the black raven on his shoulder, and the long beaks of their own masks, all at once.

Perhaps this is the night they first call themselves the Order of the Black Wing.

For now, they are only a few dozen doctors in an old monastery at the heart of a dying city.

They do not yet know that one day their hospitals will stand in distant kingdoms.

That city gates will open before their sign.

That kings will ask for their help.

That their books will become more precious than gold.

Right now, they know only one thing.

When others flee the Plague—
they go to face it.