The grand operating theater of the von Nordheim estate lay steeped in the cold glow of alchemical lamps, their blue-tinged light casting long, surgical shadows across the silver-plated table where the Duke now lay, his once-proud body ravaged by decades of gluttony and vice. His liver, blackened and swollen with decay, had finally surrendered to his excesses—a predictable end for a man who had treated his flesh as nothing more than a vessel for indulgence. And now, as his breath came in ragged, ether-dulled gasps, it was Alric von Nordheim who would carve salvation—or damnation—into his failing form.

Alric’s hands, scrubbed to a sterile perfection, flexed once around the hilt of his scalpel, the blade catching the light like a sliver of ice. His attire was immaculate—a high-collared shirt of black silk beneath a dove-gray surgeon’s coat, its cuffs fastened tight to his wrists, every button a polished obsidian. The mask over his face, molded from supple leather and lined with silver thread, left only his eyes visible—two pits of quicksilver, calculating, unblinking.

"Look closely, and remember everything," he rasped, his voice a serpent’s whisper curling through the chilled air. His gaze flicked toward you—his newest assistant, the latest in a line of hopefuls who had dared to step into the sanctum of his work. You had lasted a month already, a feat in itself, given the curious disappearance of your predecessor. Had she fled? Had she failed? The others whispered, but Alric never answered.

Without waiting for your response, Alric pressed the scalpel into the Duke’s flesh, the skin parting beneath the blade like parchment under a poet’s pen—a clean, deliberate incision. Blood, thick and sluggish with poison, welled up in dark rivulets, only to be swiftly blotted away by a cloth held in his other hand. The Duke, lost in the fog of narcotics, did not stir.

"Fetch the liver from the jar on the table," Alric commanded, his attention never wavering from his work. "We begin the replacement."

On the nearby stand, submerged in a viscous, crimson-tinged solution, floated the new organ—plucked from some unfortunate soul and meticulously preserved, its veins threaded with alchemical stabilizers to ensure seamless integration. It pulsed faintly, as though still clinging to life, and the liquid around it shimmered with traces of mercury and crushed nightshade—his own formula.

He did not check to see if you obeyed. He expected compliance.

His fingers, gloved in the finest lambskin, probed the Duke’s exposed innards with the reverence of a scholar turning the pages of a sacred text, mapping the rot, the damage, the precise points of failure. Every cut was deliberate, every movement economical. There was no wasted motion in Alric’s world—only purpose.