The Rules of My Body

Time blurred after that first night.

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The sisters wasted no time dragging me into their parents’ abandoned clinic, and from then on I was less of a guest and more of a test subject. They experimented on me the way a blacksmith tests new metal, pushing until something gave. The problem was nothing ever did.

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They discovered three rules.

The first: my body does not get sick. Not from poison, not from plague, not from anything they could dig up and throw at me. They even had me drink a vial marked with a skull and crossbones once. For a second I thought it was salad dressing.

The second: my body repairs itself. Cuts and bruises vanished in moments, shattered bones snapped back into place, organs grew back like weeds. The sisters kept pushing to see if there was a limit. They drowned me, starved me, even shoved me into the clinic’s old incinerator. I walked back out a few minutes later without a scratch. If I was destroyed completely, I simply reappeared somewhere nearby, good as new, like the world refused to get rid of me.

The third: I remember everything. Even when they burned me down to nothing, the memories stayed. Every cut, every trial, every mistake. It all came back with me whether I wanted it to or not.

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At first I thought of myself only as their prisoner, but as weeks slipped into months, I began to understand. My body was the one thing in the world that could endure their theories without limit. I was the proof they needed, the instrument through which they could test the impossible. And if humanity was to survive, someone had to shoulder that role.

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There were quiet moments that revealed their humanity. Karin would bring me bitter tea from the clinic’s cracked cabinets, insisting it might “balance my humors.” Kaguya would hum while stitching fresh sutures into wounds she knew would be gone in minutes. I came to see them not as tormentors but as scholars chasing answers no one else dared approach.

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In the end, they grew bored of running the same tests. Not because they had found solutions, but because solutions refused to exist within the walls of the clinic. So they struck a bargain: I could roam freely, as long as I handled every scrap of housework.

The clinic became my prison and my domain at once. Karin, for all her medical brilliance, was a disaster in the kitchen. I once found half a fish skeleton smoldering in the oven beside something that might have been bread. Kaguya was worse, her room looked like a battlefield, scrolls and jars piled to the ceiling, and when she did laundry she somehow made the clothes dirtier.

So I scrubbed, I mopped, I cooked. If I did not do it, no one would.

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Conversations in the clinic often spiraled. The sisters would pose questions aloud, and without thinking I answered.

One evening Karin muttered as she stitched a gash on my arm. “The body loses so much strength when blood spills. Why is it so precious?”

“It carries air,” I said. “Every breath rides the blood to every corner of you.”

Her hands froze, needle hovering over my skin. “Air… in blood? That is nonsense.”

Another time I was cooking katsu over the clinic’s battered stove. Oil hissed and spat, the air thick with the smell of frying. Kaguya frowned as the breading darkened. “Meat softens in boiling water, but here it hardens and browns. How can the same fire make two outcomes?”

“Because water never gets hot enough to trigger those changes,” I said. “Oil carries heat past that threshold. Proteins break, sugars combine, and new flavors form. That is why frying transforms food while boiling only preserves it.”

Her face reddened, and she snapped her notes shut. “You say nonsense so confidently it almost sounds true.”

I never tried to provoke them, yet it happened all the same. What seemed like common sense to me sounded outrageous to them. Their voices rose, their faces reddened, but I always noticed how they scribbled my words into their notes once the arguing was done.

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Once the sisters registered me with the guild of plague doctors, the work extended beyond cooking and sweeping. I was listed in their ledgers as a field agent, though the truth was less flattering. To them, I was a tool. A body that could not be broken was useful, even if the mind inside it protested otherwise.

The world outside had long since fractured. Human cities still stood, but only because of the barriers. Vast shimmering domes of light, etched from wards and old science, kept the Sephis from pouring in. Everything beyond those barriers was considered lost land. Some said it could be reclaimed. Most whispered it was cursed forever.

That was where I came in.

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When the sisters shoved the iron mask into my hands and told me to report for duty, I almost laughed. But no, it was real. “You will help reclaim what has been taken,” Karin said while sipping tea I had brewed. “Your condition makes you ideal.”

Ideal. That was the word she used, as if being unkillable meant I volunteered for suicide missions. Kaguya had nodded along, already scribbling deployment notes in her cramped handwriting.

So I was given a tattered coat, an identification badge, and a route into the outskirts. The other plague doctors looked at me with something between pity and relief. I was the one expected to walk through broken streets, to map ruins swallowed in fog, to lure out the Sephis so their fire could cleanse it.

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The next morning, Kaguya burst into the kitchen with the energy of a festival drummer, waving a glass vial that glowed an unsettling shade of green.

“Ken, drink my special Ultra Sephis Ender Max 3000!” she shouted.

I stared at her. “Three thousand? This is the first I have seen.”

She puffed her chest out proudly. “Ha ha. My genius has allowed me to skip past the others and leap straight into this number.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That makes no sense, you pain in the ass.”

“Yosh, yosh,” she beamed, pushing the vial toward me, “be a good guinea pig and drink this.”

And like always, I knew I would.

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By noon I was standing outside the barrier, the air sharp with cold mist, my mask rattling with each breath. Behind me, the shimmering dome of light divided safety from everything else. Before me, broken streets stretched into silence, fog curling through ruined houses.

The Sephis never made noise until they wanted to. That was the problem. You could walk half a mile without a sound, then suddenly the fog would twist, and something would come crawling out of it.

My stomach churned, not from dread, but from Kaguya’s so-called Ultra Sephis Ender Max 3000.

“If I collapse,” I muttered into my mask, “it will not be the monsters that killed me.”

The fog stirred. A shape pushed forward, dripping black ichor that hissed as it hit the stones. Its body twitched with an unnatural rhythm, like a disease forced into flesh.

I pulled the pin on one of the guild’s fire grenades and let the metal casing hum to life in my hand. The warmth built quickly, a low thrum crawling up my wrist.

The Sephis lunged, and its jaws clamped down on my forearm. The grenade went with it, my entire arm ripped away in one violent snap.

Pain flared, but only for an instant. Blood spilled, then stopped, the wound closing as if reality itself wanted it healed. Bone and muscle spiraled back into place, and by the time the Sephis swallowed my arm whole, another was already forming.

I staggered back, watching the creature convulse. Smoke curled out of its body where the grenade burned from inside. It shrieked, louder this time, the sound scraping against the stones of the ruined street.

I flexed my new fingers, shaky but solid, and muttered, “Guess that counts as a field test.”

The blast tore through the Sephis, scattering black ash across the stones. The fog swallowed the remains.

I glanced down at the bandolier slung across my chest, each grenade etched with faintly pulsing runes.

“I have twenty-nine left to detonate,” I said to no one in particular. “Field test continues.”

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The alarms rang just past dawn the next day. The dome rippled, the wards screaming in protest, and then they broke.

The Sephis came like a tide. Their shapes writhed out of the fog, slamming against the cobbled streets, black ichor spraying as fire grenades lit the air. Plague doctors in their iron masks shouted orders, dragging civilians toward the inner quarter while others raised flame-lances that spat short bursts of burning powder.

For a while, the dome held enough of them back that we believed we could contain it. But the tide swelled, bodies crawling over one another, smoke choking the sky. I saw one doctor ripped apart in the street and another crushed beneath a collapsing archway.

Karin leapt into the fray before anyone could stop her. Her fists lit with flame from the gauntlets strapped to her arms, each punch bursting like a cannon shot. The first Sephis she hit exploded into black ichor, the second was driven through a stone wall by the sheer force of her strike. For a moment the other doctors froze, watching her tear through the horde as if raw strength alone could hold the line.

Then the ground shook. A Sephis larger than the rest lumbered out of the fog, its limbs swollen and knotted like diseased tree roots. Karin roared and charged, landing a blow that cracked its chest open in a spray of ash.

It didn’t fall.

With a sound like stone grinding against stone, the monster swung a leg the size of a battering ram. The kick caught Karin full in the ribs and sent her hurtling down the street. She slammed through a wooden billboard painted with a grinning pepper, the bright red flames splintering as the whole sign collapsed around her.

Kaguya screamed her sister’s name. The line buckled as the giant Sephis pressed forward, its roar drowning out the crackle of flames.

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Kaguya’s hand shook so violently she nearly dropped another vial. “We cannot stop this,” she gasped, her eyes wide. “There are too many, too many...”

I caught her wrist. “Kaguya. Look at me.”

Her breath came fast, her pupils wide, her body shaking.

“Breathe,” I told her, slow and even. “One step at a time. You are not alone in this.”

Her voice cracked. “How can you be calm?”

“Because I have done this before,” I said. “Not here, but in my world. A disease spread through the lungs, killing faster than fire. We did not have domes or rune-tech. We had gloves, soap, and the will to separate the sick from the healthy. It worked because we stayed calm. That is the only difference between order and collapse.”

She swallowed hard. Karin groaned in the rubble, but even she looked toward me, listening despite herself.

I stood, shouting so the nearest doctors could hear. “Containment depends on discipline. Incinerate every corpse. A dead body is only a seed for more death.”

One of the senior officials balked. “That would terrify the citizens. Their faith in the dome will crumble if they see the fires.”

My jaw tightened. “Their faith is worthless if they are dead. You kept them ignorant because it was convenient, because you thought ignorance was mercy. But ignorance is why people wander straight into contagion without understanding the risk. It is why they will die unless you listen now.”

The silence was sharp enough to cut. Kaguya was still trembling, but she no longer looked lost. Karin dragged herself out of the rubble, blood on her lip, her fists still clenched.

I drew in a breath, my voice low but carrying. “It is unfortunate, but survival requires fire. Incinerate every plague body. Humanity cannot afford sentiment.”

The order was repeated down the line, some with hesitation, some with relief. Torches flared. The smell of burning flesh thickened in the fog.

For the first time I was the one giving orders. 

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