When Dawn saw the hand reaching toward him, he instinctively stepped back.
Facing a man who might be carrying the Black Death, even in a dream he had no desire to make contact.
"Please, doctor, save him! Whatever you want, I'll give it to you!"
The man cried desperately, tears streaming down his face. His forehead had already turned red from repeatedly striking it against the floor.
What a nuisance.
Dawn clicked his tongue softly.
If he could use magic, he would have countless ways to make this man retreat. But as a Muggle in this dream, he was forced to deal with such endless pleading.
It filled him with an inexplicable irritation.
"Fine. Bring him inside. I'll try."
Dawn stepped aside impatiently, hoping to get rid of them quickly.
Hearing this, the man scrambled to his feet and thanked him repeatedly. Following Dawn's instructions, he placed the boy on the iron bed and stripped off his clothes.
Dawn then began rummaging through the boxes and bottles arranged beside the bed.
Although he had no way of curing the plague, he had at least heard about how plague doctors in this era attempted treatment.
Soon enough, he found what he was looking for.
From one of the boxes, he took out a small knife wrapped tightly in oiled cloth.
That should be it.
Dawn picked up the knife and casually spun it once between his fingers.
Then he turned toward the boy on the bed.
Avoiding the arteries, he made several shallow cuts along the back of the boy's hand and the side of his arm.
Drip.
Drip.
Thin streams of blood immediately began flowing from the wounds.
The white sheets were soon stained crimson, and the metallic scent of blood gradually filled the air.
"There. Treatment's done. Take him and go."
Dawn tossed the knife back into the box and waved dismissively.
The man looked at the flowing blood and visibly relaxed.
Even though his face was hidden beneath the cloth, the wrinkles around his eyes loosened.
But he did not leave.
Instead, he hesitated and asked, "Doctor... I remember... isn't there another way to treat this illness?"
Another method?
Dawn frowned.
He rubbed the leather glove on his palm as he searched through what little knowledge he remembered.
Aside from bloodletting, several other treatments had indeed been used during the Middle Ages.
One was powdered emerald.
An Italian physician named Gentile da Foligno, a professor at the University of Bologna, once claimed that emeralds possessed powerful healing properties capable of curing all diseases.
Because of his prestige, the idea quickly spread, becoming the preferred treatment for wealthy families.
Of course, it was worth noting that Foligno himself died of the plague in June of 1348.
Whether he actually swallowed emerald powder remained unknown.
Other treatments included inducing vomiting, administering enemas, applying essential oils, or placing leeches or frogs on swollen areas.
From a modern perspective, none of these methods had any real effect.
Seeing that the man refused to leave, Dawn simply pointed at the jars and bottles and let him handle it himself.
He had absolutely no intention of performing something like an enema.
The man looked helpless, but when he saw Dawn standing there coldly, he gritted his teeth and began trying everything.
He studied the labels on the bottles and applied various substances to the boy.
Soon the child began vomiting and suffering from severe diarrhea, filthy liquid spreading across the floor.
Dawn's eyelid twitched.
Seeing the increasingly disgusting mess, he stepped back two paces, silently cursing his poor judgment.
The man, however, showed no disgust at all.
He treated each strange liquid like a precious elixir, pouring them eagerly into the boy's mouth.
Dawn shrugged.
After such a "treatment," even a healthy person might not survive.
But none of that concerned him.
Leaving the father and son in the outer room, Dawn returned to the bedroom and resumed searching through the desk.
In truth, he had not expected to find anything remarkable. After all, this was merely a Muggle doctor.
He only hoped to find something to read and pass the time during this dull dream.
Yes.
Dull.
Compared to the detective's world before, this experience was painfully boring.
No adventures. No magic.
Just a small room trapping him inside.
Dawn already regretted entering this dream. Yet after thoroughly searching the bedroom, the situation suddenly took an unexpected turn.
Under the bed, inside a large bag filled with miscellaneous items, Dawn discovered a Bible.
The Old and New Testaments.
Out of habit, he flipped it open casually.
But then he noticed something strange. There were handwritten words between the printed lines.
A doctor writing reading reflections inside a church Bible?
That seemed odd. But upon closer inspection, he realized the writing was not commentary.
It was a diary.
Well.
A doctor using the church's Bible as a diary actually made perfect sense.
Dawn couldn't help but feel that he had an uncanny talent for discovering people's diaries.
Everywhere he went, he seemed to find one.
Curious, he began reading.
Soon, however, his expression changed.
The diary mentioned wizards.
[Ever since Hippocrates of ancient Greece proposed the theory of the four humors and wrote the Hippocratic Oath, I have believed that medicine is a discipline governed by logic.
But today, within this quarantined plague district, I witnessed something completely illogical, incomprehensible—something that can only be described as a miracle.]
[A little girl of about eight years old, covered in black spots and on the verge of death, recovered instantly after I declared her beyond saving.
It was miraculous.
So miraculous that it frightened me.
Because it contradicted everything I had learned about medicine. Therefore, I did something that violated the sacred oath of a physician.
I lied to the girl's parents and told them she had died.
I kept the girl for myself.]
[And then—
I dissected her.
Yes. I killed a child. Because I was too curious. I wanted to see what made her different.
The act fills me with guilt.
Yet I also believe it may not matter.
If I can discover the reason behind her recovery, I may be able to cure every disease in the world.
But soon...
I began to regret it. Because I found nothing unusual in the girl's body.
Her organs were identical to any other human's. I could not find the source of her miraculous power.
God...
What have I done?
In my impulsiveness, I wasted such a precious specimen.]
Dawn narrowed his eyes.
He was certain that girl had been a wizard.
Her sudden recovery had likely been the result of accidental magic triggered by her desperate desire to survive.
Unfortunately, even though she had miraculously recovered from the plague, her fate had still ended tragically.
Dawn rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Before this, he had always disliked the Statute of Secrecy. He believed it limited magical progress and encouraged stagnation.
But now, he wondered if the law might also have protected wizards.
Before the International Statute of Secrecy was signed in 1689, wizards had been deeply intertwined with the Muggle world.
Many even served kings.
If that was the case...
Then powerful Muggles throughout history must have captured and experimented on countless wizards.
Even this doctor had succumbed to temptation after witnessing magic once.
Dawn continued reading.
The dull dream had suddenly become interesting.
[I suspected the girl was not unique.
After deliberately searching, I eventually learned something through a secret society.
Wizards.
She was a wizard.
To be honest, I never believed wizards truly existed.
I thought the church's witch hunts were merely a political tool to eliminate enemies.]
A secret society.
Dawn paused, tapping his finger thoughtfully on his knee.
The term carried a strong historical tone.
Secret societies were communities formed by European scholars between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, often opposing religious authority.
Among the most famous were the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons.
As a learned physician, the diary's author encountering such groups was not surprising.
This was the first time Dawn had glimpsed the hidden undercurrents behind the witch hunts.
History books usually spoke only of the persecution itself.
It seemed history concealed far more than people realized.
Dawn continued reading.
[Thanks to a high-ranking member within the society, we finally discovered a hidden wizard before the church could find him.
We attempted to capture him. We wished to study the secret of this so-called magic and benefit mankind.
So we gathered twenty men and set out.
I went with them.
But—
Wizards are terrifying.
Unlike the girl who could not resist me, this wizard summoned flames that burned the crowd.
He pointed a wooden stick at people, and they exploded into pieces.
Human flesh flew everywhere.
I believe that if he had not feared attracting attention and chosen to leave, none of us would have survived.
His departure was strange as well.
He vanished instantly, like teleportation.
God. How did the church defeat such monsters and burn them at the stake?
I cannot understand.
I truly cannot understand.]
The handwriting became increasingly frantic.
Dawn stared at the chaotic lines. He could almost feel the terror the writer had experienced.
Slowly, Dawn ran his finger across the page. For the first time, he began questioning something he had always accepted.
The witch hunts.
Every book described them clearly.
They were a campaign led by the church, in which Muggles persecuted wizards.
But could Muggles truly hunt wizards so easily?
Wizards depended heavily on their wands. Without them, many lost the ability to fight.
Their bodies were just as fragile as Muggles'. Blades and arrows could kill them. Many wizards were not particularly powerful.
All of this suggested that wizards were not vastly superior to Muggles.
And yet...
Something about the witch hunts still seemed strange.
A single wizard capable of casting Fiendfyre and Apparition could destroy an entire city.
Given enough time, such a wizard could potentially devastate the church itself.
Surely at least some wizards possessed such power. And even if Muggle-born wizards sided with the church, the conflict should not have been so one-sided.
Yet history recorded almost no organized resistance from the wizarding side.
Even the four founders of Hogwarts had chosen only to defend their territory.
But what about Salazar Slytherin? There were no records of him retaliating against the church.
Perhaps...
He had tried—and failed.
Dawn touched his chin thoughtfully beneath the mask.
Could the church members themselves have been wizards? Perhaps the witch hunts were not Muggles against wizards, but wizards purging other wizards.
But if that were true, why did wizarding history contain no mention of it?
Dawn was convinced there was a hidden secret. He continued flipping through the Bible.
But the diary ended abruptly.
Perhaps the writer had abandoned his pursuit after that terrifying encounter.
Dawn sighed in disappointment and began searching the bag again, hoping to uncover something else.
But before he could get far—
"Doctor! Doctor! Are you there?"
The man outside began shouting again. Dawn ignored him at first. But the voice grew louder and louder.
His eyelid twitched. Anger surged within him.
Taking a deep breath, Dawn pushed open the door.
"What is it now?"
The coldness in his voice made the man recoil in fear. Still, he knelt again and pleaded.
"Doctor... please whip him!"
Dawn frowned.
It took him a moment to understand.
People of this era believed disease was divine punishment. Only through whipping by a doctor or priest could a patient atone for their sins.
The belief dated back to the Black Death in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
It had even produced an organization called the Flagellant Brotherhood.
Members walked through towns whipping themselves with iron-tipped lashes while confessing their sins.
Their bodies would be torn apart, blood splattering everywhere.
It sounded absurd. Yet in the harsh religious climate of the Middle Ages, the flagellants were revered.
They were moral icons.
Eventually, Pope Clement VI banned them for spreading apocalyptic ideas. But the belief in redemption through whipping remained.
Dawn had no patience for further nonsense.
He grabbed a wooden stick and struck the boy a few times on the arms and legs.
The man happily carried his son away.
Dawn ignored the filth on the floor and returned to the bedroom.
He spent hours searching again. He even pried up sections of the floorboards.
But found nothing.
As night fell, Dawn finally lay down on the bed. With nothing else to do, he tried sleeping.
Perhaps he could even dream inside the dream.
To block the foul smell drifting from the outer room, he lit several pieces of incense.
The night passed quietly.
Early the next morning—
Bang bang bang.
The door shook violently.
"Doctor! Open up! Someone died again! Someone else in the village is dead!"
Dawn opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Annoyance surged through him.
This dream was becoming unbearable.
Knowing the door would not withstand another forced entry, he got up and opened it.
Outside stood a young man in his twenties.
Seeing Dawn's plague doctor attire, the man swallowed nervously and lowered his voice. He asked Dawn to come handle the body.
Dawn originally intended to refuse. But since he had nothing else to do, he followed along.
They arrived outside a small house.
The door stood open.
Inside lay a blood-covered body.
Villagers had already gathered nearby, stacking firewood in preparation for burning the corpse.
Dawn leaned in and looked.
To his surprise, the dead man was the father from yesterday.
His arm was mangled, as though something had gnawed at it. Beside him lay the boy, his face bluish and lifeless.
Dawn frowned.
"A wild animal entered the village?"
The young man shook his head. "There aren't any wild animals around here."
He hesitated before explaining.
"I heard... he saw somewhere that human flesh could cure disease. So he cut meat from his own arm and fed it to the boy."
"But the wound wasn't treated properly. This morning they found him dead."
"And the boy... had already died beside him."
Dawn fell silent.
___________
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