The pressure-regulation room was a tomb of rusted iron and stagnant air, yet to Silas, it felt like a sanctuary. He lay amidst the burlap sacks, his breath hitching in the rhythmic, jagged cadence of a man who had just swallowed a thunderstorm. The darkness here was absolute, save for the faint, vestigial glow of the stitching scars on his palms—a soft, pulsing cerulean that seemed to mock the charcoal gloom of the Low-Stitch.
But the silence outside was a lie. Inside his mind, a cacophony of voices had taken up residence, turning his consciousness into a crowded, discordant theater.
Check the left flank, you idiot boy, Drax's gravelly baritone snarled in the back of his skull. The Wardens always sweep the ventilation shafts first.
Quiet, you brute, Kaelen's voice countered, smooth and sharp as a glass shard. The Wardens are predictable. It's the Unseen Hand we should fear. They'll notice my absence at the Loom by dawn.
Silas pressed his palms against his temples, his teeth grinding until his jaw ached. "Shut up," he whispered, his voice a frail thread in the dark. "Both of you. Out."
The voices didn't vanish, but they receded into a low, buzzing static. This was the "Memory-Bleed"—not just a transfer of power, but a deleterious merging of souls. He was Silas Thorne, a boy who had spent seventeen years as a footnote in history, now forced to serve as a library for the men who had tried to erase him. He felt the phantom weight of Kaelen's refined education and the visceral, muscular memory of Drax's brawls.
It was an esoteric burden, a ledger of souls that demanded to be read.
He forced himself to sit up. His body felt different—denser, more coordinated. The hunger that had been his constant companion since birth had morphed into something else: a cold, analytical requirement for Aether. He was no longer a starving child; he was an engine that required fuel.
He reached into his belt and pulled out Kaelen's obsidian daggers. Even without their blue runes, they felt significant. From Kaelen's stolen memories, Silas knew these weren't just gutter-trash. They were "Void-Linked" blades, crafted in the middle-tiers of the Spires. They were worth more than a thousand lives in the Low-Stitch.
The Rusty Loom, the thought surfaced, unbidden but clear.
Kaelen's hidden stash. The memory was vivid: a loose floorboard beneath a grease-stained rug in the back office of a tavern that served as a front for the Needle-Guilds. Gold, refined Aether-vials, and perhaps—most importantly—a "Identification Garment." In Caelum-Ru, your clothes were your passport. Without a Refined Garment, you were a ghost; with one, you were a citizen.
Silas knew he couldn't stay in this hole. The Wardens would have already cordoned off the alleyway where the unspooling occurred. They would find the husks of Drax and Kaelen, and they would realize that a "Stitcher"—a creature from the forbidden legends—was walking their streets.
He stood, his movements possessing a surreptitious grace that belonged to Kaelen. He adjusted his tattered tunic, trying to hide the glowing scars on his hands. He needed to blend in. He needed to become the very thing he had just destroyed.
Leaving the regulator room, he entered the labyrinthine network of the "Veins." The tunnels were slick with a mixture of condensation and industrial runoff, but his new eyes—Kaelen's eyes—saw the world in a different spectrum. He could see the faint trails of Aether flowing through the pipes, the "pulse" of the city. He followed a secondary steam-line toward the Southeast District, where the air grew thicker with the scent of roasted meat and cheap Aether-ale.
The Rusty Loom appeared through the fog like a derelict ship. It was a sprawling, three-story structure made of blackened timber and reinforced brass. Steam hissed from its eaves, and the muffled sound of a discordant lute echoed from its stained-glass windows.
Silas paused in the shadow of a neighboring warehouse. His heart hammered against his ribs—his own heart, this time.
Walk in like you own the debts, Kaelen's voice suggested with a chilling confidence. The barman, Elgar, is a coward. He'll see the daggers and assume I sent you.
Silas took a breath, centering himself. He didn't just walk; he strutted. He adopted Kaelen's posture, the slight tilt of the head, the cold, distant gaze that signaled a man of consequence. It was a performance, a life-or-death masquerade.
The interior of the tavern was a haze of smoke and desperation. Men with mechanical limbs and women with glowing Aether-tattoos sat in booths, whispering in a dialect of the slums Silas barely understood. He ignored them, heading straight for the back counter.
Elgar, the barman, was a man who looked like he had been put together from spare parts. One of his eyes was a brass-encased lens that whirred as it focused on Silas.
"We're closed to strays," Elgar rasped, his voice a mechanical grind.
Silas didn't speak. He reached into his belt and placed one of the obsidian daggers on the scarred wood of the bar. The black stone seemed to drink the dim light of the room.
Elgar's brass eye dilated. He looked from the dagger to Silas's face, searching for a recognition that wasn't there. "That... that belongs to the Captain. Where is Kaelen?"
"The Captain is... indisposed," Silas said, using the precise, clipped vowels he had harvested from Kaelen's mind. "He sent me for the Ledger. And the primary kit."
Elgar hesitated, his mechanical eye spinning rapidly. "He didn't mention a new apprentice. And you look like you haven't eaten since the Great Unspooling, boy."
Silas leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. He allowed a tiny fraction of the Void-Soul's hunger to leak into his gaze. It wasn't a magical attack, just an aura of absolute, terrifying emptiness. The air around the bar seemed to drop several degrees.
"Kaelen's business is not your concern, Elgar," Silas whispered. "But the Void is. Do you want to see what happens when a vacuum is insulted?"
The barman's bravado evaporated. He wiped a bead of greasy sweat from his forehead and nodded jerkily toward the back door. "Office is open. Just... take it and go. I don't want no part of whatever mess the Jackals have gotten into tonight."
Silas retrieved the dagger and walked into the back office. It was a cramped space, smelling of old paper and stale tobacco. He found the rug—a threadbare thing depicting the High Spires—and kicked it aside.
The loose floorboard was exactly where Kaelen's memory said it would be.
Silas pried it up with the tip of his dagger. Beneath it lay a wooden chest bound in silver wire. He didn't have the key, but he didn't need one. He touched the silver wire, and the dark filaments of his "Stitching" emerged, seeking the Aether-lock. The wire didn't break; it simply unraveled, the magic feeding into his core.
He opened the lid.
Inside was a fortune that made Silas's head spin. Three pouches of gold sovereigns. Five vials of "Blue Heaven"—high-grade, refined Aether used by the Tier-Four Needle-Masters. A small, leather-bound book—the "Ledger of Souls" that contained the names of Kaelen's patrons.
And finally, folded at the bottom, was a charcoal-gray cloak. It was an "Infiltrator's Garment," woven with shadow-silk and reinforced with memory-dampening threads. To wear it was to become almost invisible in the fog of the Low-Stitch.
Silas pulled the cloak out, the fabric feeling like cool water against his fingers. As he touched it, a new sensation hit him—an ephemeral echo of the weaver who had made it.
I am no longer a ghost, he thought, wrapping the cloak around his shoulders. The garment automatically adjusted to his frame, the Aetheric threads humming as they bonded with his stolen vitality. I am a wolf in a ghost's skin.
But as he reached for the gold, a sharp, excruciating pain lanced through his skull.
Behind you! Drax's voice screamed, no longer a suggestion but a desperate warning.
Silas spun around just as the office door was kicked open.
Standing there was a woman. She was tall, her skin the color of alabaster, her hair a shock of crimson that looked like a bloodstain against the gloom. She wasn't wearing the rags of the slums; she was dressed in a sleek, ivory uniform reinforced with gold-filigree—the mark of a Warden-Aspirant.
But it was her eyes that froze Silas. They were a brilliant, piercing violet, and they were glowing with a light that didn't come from a tainted core. It was pure, celestial Aether.
"The resonance led me here," she said, her voice calm and terrifyingly cold. She held a rapier of translucent crystal that vibrated with a holy frequency. "I expected to find Kaelen. Instead, I find a scavenger wearing his skin."
She raised the rapier, the tip pointed directly at Silas's Void-Soul.
"Tell me, boy," she said, a small, dangerous smile touching her lips. "How does a ghost learn to stitch? And more importantly, how long will it take for me to unravel you?"
Silas gripped the obsidian daggers, his knuckles white. The "Memory-Bleed" was a roar now—Drax wanting to charge, Kaelen wanting to bargain, and Silas... Silas just wanting to survive.
"You're late, Warden," Silas said, the stolen voices in his head finally falling into a terrifying equilibrium. "The ghost you're looking for is already gone. I'm all that's left."
The air in the room pressurized as the Warden-Aspirant prepared to strike. Silas felt the Void-Soul throb, the hunger rising to meet the celestial light of the rapier.
He didn't have the training. He didn't have the soul-core. But he had the memories of two dead men and a hunger that could swallow the world.
The first true battle of the Stitcher was about to begin.