The three days leading up to the Masquerade were a blur of surgical precision and calculated sacrilege.
In the flickering dimness of his clinic, Caspian Thorne labored over a task that would have seen him burned at the stake by the Church. On his workbench lay the vocal cords he had harvested from the "Scrap-Licker" in the alleyway. To a normal physician, they were merely grey, withered tissue. To a Mourner, they were a vessel for the "Echo of Silence."
Using a needle made of bone, Caspian stitched the cords into a sphere of solidified Aether-glass. As he worked, he whispered the Lament of the Unseen into the jar, trapping the sound of a man's final, forgotten breath inside.
This was a Silence Bomb. When shattered, it wouldn't explode with fire; it would erase all sound in a thirty-foot radius for ten minutes. In a world governed by the rhythmic clanking of the Great Pump, silence was the ultimate camouflage.
"Doc, you're bleeding again," Kael whispered from the shadows.
Caspian touched his ear. A thin trail of indigo fluid—his new, mutated blood—was leaking from his canal. It was the price of the "Acting." By preparing for a heist involving the dead, he was deepening his resonance with the Mourner pathway.
"The transition is accelerating," Caspian muttered, his voice sounding hollow. "Pack the medical bag, Kael. Include the 'Lung-Dilators' and the heavy sedatives. We leave for the Upper-City at dusk."
The Ascent
To reach Aethelgard, one had to take the Great Ascent—a massive, steam-driven elevator that rose through the "Cloud-Barrier."
Caspian wore his new persona: Dr. Victor Voss, a plague doctor from the Western Isles. He donned a heavy, waxed-leather coat and a bird-like mask with dark glass lenses. The mask served a dual purpose—it hid his shimmering indigo eyes and filtered the increasingly rich, intoxicating oxygen of the upper tiers.
As the elevator pierced the clouds, the world changed.
The soot and rust of the Gutters vanished, replaced by gleaming brass, white marble, and streets lit by "Sun-Spheres"—glowing orbs containing captured lightning. The air here was so pure it made Caspian's lungs ache. To the rich, oxygen was a luxury to be flaunted; to Caspian, it tasted like a lie.
He checked his pocket. The invitation from "Marble" was there, embossed with the Governor's seal. Beside it lay the iron coin from the man in the white suit.
Someone is planning to assassinate a God, the man had said.
Caspian looked up at the center of the island. There sat the Cathedral of the Iron Lung. It was a mountain of pistons and pipes, a gothic nightmare of engineering that breathed for the entire archipelago. He could feel it now—a deep, thrumming vibration that resonated in his marrow. It didn't sound like a machine. It sounded like a sleeping titan's pulse.
The Governor's Manor
The Governor's estate was a fortress of glass and gold.
Masked nobles moved through the gardens like colorful predatory fish. There were "Clockwork Knights" stationed at every corner—mechanical suits of armor powered by high-pressure steam, their visors glowing with a faint, baleful red light.
"Name?" a guard barked. His armor hissed as he moved.
"Dr. Victor Voss," Caspian replied, his voice muffled by the beak of his mask. He handed over the invitation.
The guard's "Truth-Lens" whirred, scanning the paper and Caspian's vitals. For a second, Caspian feared his indigo blood would trigger an alarm, but the Mourner's passive ability—Cold Hearth—kept his body temperature and heart rate at a deathly, undetectable low.
"Proceed. Keep your mask on. The Governor has a phobia of 'Gutter-Flu.'"
Caspian stepped into the ballroom. The opulence was nauseating. Beneath the music and the laughter, his enhanced hearing picked up something else: the rhythmic thump-hiss of the Iron Lung, louder here than anywhere else.
He scanned the room and spotted Lady Elara (Marble). She was dressed in a gown of shimmering grey silk, her neck covered by a high lace collar to hide the cracks in her skin. She caught his eye and gave a nearly imperceptible nod toward the east wing.
The Vault.
The Tongue of the Silent King
Caspian slipped away from the dancers, melting into the shadows. His Sequence 9 powers allowed him to become a "Living Ghost"—as long as he stayed in the darkness and held his breath, people's eyes would simply slide over him, unable to register his presence.
He reached the heavy iron doors of the private museum. Two Clockwork Sentinels stood guard.
Caspian didn't hesitate. He pulled the Silence Bomb from his coat and shattered it against the floor.
Snap.
Total, crushing silence engulfed the hallway. The music from the ballroom died instantly. The hissing of the steam-guards became a pantomime.
The Sentinels froze, their auditory sensors suddenly blinded by the lack of input. Caspian moved between them like a flicker of smoke. He used a specialized "Corrosive Acid" (distilled from Void-Stray bile) to melt the lock of the vault.
Inside, the room was filled with "Relics of the Old World." He saw a rusted "Stop" sign treated as a shield of power; a cracked television screen labeled as a "Mirror of Infinite Faces."
But in the center, resting on a pedestal of obsidian, was a jar of golden liquid. Inside the liquid floated a grey, muscular tongue, covered in tiny, blinking eyes.
The Tongue of the Silent King.
As Caspian approached, the eyes on the tongue all turned to look at him. A voice exploded in his mind—not in words, but in raw, jagged concepts.
FOOD. VESSEL. THE DEEP. THE SUN IS A WOUND.
Caspian's vision blurred. His "Spirit-Hunger" roared. This was a Sequence 7 artifact, far beyond his current level. To touch it was to risk instant madness.
Do it, the Curator's voice whispered in his mind. To save the Gallery, you must consume the silence.
He reached out his hand, but before his fingers could touch the glass, a cold blade pressed against his throat.
"I told you," a voice whispered, perfectly audible despite the Silence Bomb. "Someone is always watching."
Caspian froze. Looking into the polished glass of the display case, he saw the reflection of the man in the white suit. The man's Clockwork Monocle was spinning at a furious speed, glowing with a golden light that seemed to eat the silence.
"You're early, Doctor," the man said. "The assassination doesn't start for another five minutes."
"Who are you working for?" Caspian hissed.
"The same people you are, eventually," the man replied. "The people who want to wake up from this dream. But today, I'm just a 'Director.' And you... you are my lead actor. Pick up the jar."
"It'll kill me."
"No," the man smiled, his reflection looking like a shark's. "It will make you speak. And when you speak, the Iron Lung will listen."
Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the manor. The floor groaned as the very foundation of the island shuddered.
The Great Pump had stopped.
In the sudden, terrifying true silence that followed, the "Tongue" in the jar began to scream—a sound that could only be heard by the soul.