Plague Doctor: When I Say You're Sick, You'd Better Believe Me

[Western Fantasy + Mystery + Plague Doctor + Profession-Based Progression + Cunning]

Chen Shuo is a plague doctor.

His weapon is a blank notebook. Each time he diagnoses a disease, a new page of abilities grows from its paper. The price is clearly stated, too: with every disease recorded, he loses something from his own body. First his fingers go numb, then his memories, then his sense of touch. Once the book is full, he will become the sum of all the diseases he has recorded.

Something is beating beneath Graybell City. A heart, made of living flesh. Older than the Church, older than the age itself. Its pulse passes through the walls of the bell tower, burrows into the base of the stone fortress fountain, and crawls up the iron rod Old Hoss has been striking for eighteen years, planting a laughing disease inside people's bodies. The afflicted tear the skin on their faces back behind their ears. Rings of nodules grow across their bones, and the nodules ring on their own, matching the bells' frequency.

But Graybell City is only an outlet.

The war of the gods ended many years ago. The Church, the plague doctors, and the bellkeepers have each been licking their wounds, each believing the victor was one of their own. They were all wrong. The true victor is the "Ocean." It crushed all the gods and claimed this age. The God of Alchemy is nothing more than a willful child in its service. The God of Plague Doctors stands at the boundary, neither saving nor killing, neither passing judgment. Then there is "Flesh," the seventh element, the only authority without a boundary, locked in the deepest underground, waiting for someone willing to cross the wall.

Some diseases should not be named. Some walls should not be crossed. And gods are best kept at a distance.

"We walk the boundary between the dead and the living. When the bells toll for plague, we are the last line of defense."

"Even if a stake awaits us beyond that line."