Within a year, it afflicted almost the entire population of prisoners, and by the second year, they were all either dead or comatose, able to breathe without obstruction, but apparently unable to enjoy the effects of the air they had taken in. While this rid the council of a very tricky problem, what to do with the large population of captured loyalists, it was also a forewarning of a massive tragedy looming for the entire world.

By the second year, the affliction had spread to half of the known world, and a full half of the citizens of the newly renamed Capitol Civitas were either dead or dying. The Society of Rational Observation had been called upon to discover the mechanism by which the disease spread, but their findings, only reached after another full year of experimentation, only confirmed the worst:

The disease was transmitted from person to person by some form of close contact, however the delay between when it could be transmitted, and when the infected began to show signs of affliction, was at least a full month. Sometimes several. A single infected person could live in a city for a full month, infecting others without any knowledge of it, before they even began to notice the slightest shortness of breath.

The Council devoted its resources to combating the virus, to isolating entire villages, but they faced the frustrating prospect that by sending out emissaries to warn people and enforce isolation, they might very well be hastening the spread of the illness, since the emissaries would have to be dispatched from the center of administrative power in the world, which also happened to be where the virus was most widespread.

And over all, the pall of doom also hung, because knowing that they were likely already infected by an illness with no cure, they were all acutely aware that they would likely catch themselves feeling an unusual faintness from a minor exertion some day, and they knew that when they did, it would foretell the end.

They began to explore methods of treatment, in a veritable panic, for by then, it had become clear that even if it took between one and two years, the illness did not subside or leave once present, and it was always fatal. In the fourth year since victory, with as many towns and villages isolated as possible, receiving and sending missives and reports to the empire at large entirely from purpose-built signal towers, the ever-shrinking population of the Society of Rational Observation stumbled across a method binding together the employ of magic and machinery. By heating certain materials, and using magic to permeate the cells of an afflicted person with the gases emitted by those materials, a breathless person could be revived temporarily from their stupor, and if a spell was cast to make the transfer happen continuously, a person could live indefinitely as long as the spell was maintained.

Enchanted capsules of the pressurized gaseous products of the burned materials began to be manufactured and distributed to citizens of the capitol; first to the members of the Society, then to anyone else who could be reached.

In spite of the extremely broad, nearly unlimited support and love the Council of Citizens had enjoyed on the day of its final victory over the Old Regime, it was not immune to the panic and fear engendered by the spread of this new illness. Initially it was believed to be some trick of the Magi as they raged against the dying of their League, and people rallied even closer around the Citizens Council and the administration it oversaw. However, with time, people grew frustrated by the council's inability to end the crisis, and while villages which had managed to isolate in time were very effectively held in captivity by their own fear, in regions which were infected, unrest and chaos began to take root.

Until the word spread of a cure. A cure which could only be created by the great industrial resources, magical knowledge, and technical expertise available at the Capitol. The capitol made its best effort to distribute these new devices throughout the world, but there were simply too few to distribute to everyone.

They were forced to prioritize the regions which were best able to produce the resources which were used to produce more of the devices. This created further resentment on the part of those living in regions which were not able to provide those resources, and by virtue of the enormous urgency of the pressure placed on the Council to maintain order, thus began a policy of preferential treatment which slowly evolved into a policy of control by the mechanism of threatening to withhold the Vapor of Life from entire towns and regions. In spite of its best intentions, the Council had finally come full circle, and the exigencies of reality had transformed it into the very thing it sought to destroy.

All because one mage, in his foolishness, had accidentally summoned a demon, and had, more successfully than he would ever know, managed to replace in the summoning spell all referential forms of humanity with those of microbes. The "Demon Sickness" (which was, again, more accurate than anyone could possibly know) came to define the landscape of society for generations upon generations to come. But time moves only in one direction, and all stasis must eventually give way to change.

As the miners wordlessly mined in the rock for materials to extract mercury, one of the materials needed for the Vapor of Life, they exchanged nervous glances. They knew their work was illegal, and that, if caught, their entire province could be punished, but without an independent secret stockpile of apparatus for infusing the Vapor of Life, their plans would grind to a halt within months. A second revolution was brewing. As with all revolutions, those planning it believed it to be inevitable, but, again as with all revolutions, time alone would tell.