Where silver runs, the world remembers.
The Silver's Ache
The silver woke him first — a sharp, pulsing sting that raced beneath his skin like a river of fire. A boy — fifteen, not yet grown, but marked by the ruin in ways no elder could name — lay curled on the cracked stone floor of the tunnel's deepest chamber — spine twisted, breath ragged. Beneath his thin shirt, something flickered under the skin of his wrist and throat: a ghostly vein of light, quicksilver pulsing like it had a mind of its own.
He stumbled, falling hard to his knees on the cold, slick stone. The tunnel's biting cold meant nothing to him; sweat beaded on his forehead, trickling into his eyes. His body burned with a private heat, a silent, internal struggle unseen by those around him.
Outside, rain drummed like a thousand small fists on rusted vents overhead. Lightning cracked in the distance — a brief, searing vein of light that found its echo in the silver threads writhing beneath his wrist. Each thunderclap shuddered through the old bones of Haven Below, rattling loose flakes of concrete and rust from the corroded pipework above. The low, arched ceiling, patched with rusted metal, dripped sluggishly, the rhythmic plink of water echoing through the oppressive gloom. Cold drops striking his bare shoulder—a weeping from the world above, echoing his pain. Silvery light snaking in the wall mirrored the storm outside, hissing and rattling as if the tunnel itself groaned with him, mourning the thing coiled in his veins.
He bit down on a raw cry, tasting blood. The ruin's damp breath pressed close — stone walls stitched with rusted pipes, scraps of tarp sagging over cracked concrete like old wounds half-forgotten. Far away, thunder rolled, a low growl swallowed by the earth above. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. A hissed breath. A low, animal sound that escaped before he could swallow it down. He pressed his palm over the glow at his wrist, as if he could dam the river with bone and skin alone. But the silver only shimmered brighter, answering the storm outside with its own wordless hunger. As the silver throbbed, a blinding, insistent flash behind his eyes, the world dissolved into pure white.
For a timeless moment, there was only the searing light, the all-consuming pain. He squeezed his eyes shut. He could see it, even in the dark behind his eyelids — that memory. And when the thunder fell silent for a heartbeat, the ruin's hush whispered back: Remember.
And he did. In the flicker between thunder and breath, he was that boy again — he wasn't in Haven Below anymore. He was back there.
The beasts came, glass-back things with pale plates along their spines, eyes like clouded moons. They moved in packs, silent except for the scrape of claws on old stone. The boy could still taste the fear, how it sank into his tongue like bitter smoke. The glass-back's drool hit the tunnel floor in tiny burning drips — each one a promise of what would happen to him if he stumbled.
He was small — smaller than he'd ever admit now — bones sharp under ragged clothes. His ribs felt cracked from hunger. His throat was dry, but his palms were wet — gripping a broken pipe like it was a sword. He wasn't alone. Not entirely. Beyond the beast, beyond the pulsing terror, he registered the figures huddled by the rusted shelves. There was a girl barely older than him, kneeling amidst the debris. Her filthy hair, matted with dust and fear, fell over her eyes, but her small body was rigid, a desperate, fragile shield for the two tiny forms pressed against her back. He could hear their choked sobs, their small fists pressed tight against their eyes, trying to block out the malevolent glow of the beast's unnatural eyes.
"Don't look," she whispered, her voice a thin, ragged thread, repeating the plea like a desperate prayer. "Don't look. Don't look." But they looked anyway. Their faces, pale and streaked with tears, were turned towards him. Their eyes — too big, too hollow, reflecting the impossible blue of the beast's veins — burned into his back. An unspoken plea, a desperate understanding. A horrific certainty settled in his gut: If he ran, they would die first.
He knew it. He wasn't fast enough to escape with them anyway, not with their small, stumbling legs. The grim truth settled in his gut like a lead weight: he was their only shield, a fragile, useless one.
So, he didn't run. He stood his ground, the cold weight of that truth settling deeper than the dust on his skin. He whispered,
"Please, stop," like the words themselves might somehow penetrate the beast's corrupted mind. The silver's whisper flickered in his blood again, a strange echo of the cosmic impact, and tiny veins under his wrist glowed a faint, trembling silver. He didn't understand it. He only knew, with a desperate, primal urge, that he wanted it to help.
The beast didn't care. Its inhuman eyes, still fixated on him, held no recognition, no mercy. It crept forward, slow and deliberate now, its claws scraping faint sparks from the ancient stone floor.
He raised the broken pipe, its jagged edge a pitiful defense against the oncoming horror. His breath cracked in the frigid air, sounding as fragile as the floor beneath his bare feet. The glow under his skin flickered once more, a desperate plea for power, but it was too soft, too weak, like a dying ember. He thought he felt something within him reach, straining for a connection, for something deep under the tunnel's old bones – a vast, hidden reservoir– but there was nothing there for it to find. Not yet.
When the glass-back lunged, the boy braced for its jaws — and for a heartbeat, he almost wished it would take him first. The silver's whisper, that faint, nascent power, died in his veins, leaving him cold and utterly helpless.
But the dark behind him changed. A sharp tap — metal striking stone once, then again. A dry voice, like grit in a cracked throat, uttered a single word, too low and alien for him to distinguish. The beast's eager hiss of corrosive acid suddenly turned to steam, dissolving into the air.
Light flared – not from the boy, but from the intricate runes carved into an iron staff, held by a figure that had materialized from the shadows. The beast shrieked, a sound of agony and rage, as hairline cracks spiderwebbed across its mirrored plates. It writhed, a monstrous dance of splintering light, then scattered, dissolving into foul-smelling smoke, a metallic tang, and the scent of old, old dust.
The boy fell to his knees, the broken pipe clattering from his numb fingers. His hands were shaking too hard to hold anything. The three girls, silent and wide-eyed, didn't run. They only stared, their small faces pale with shock and a dawning, fragile hope. They should have died there.
A figure stepped into the leaking, hesitant light of a broken lamp—his coat heavy with the ancient dust of the tunnels, his iron staff flickering as if it held a storm in chains. His gaze swept over them, landing first on the boy crumpled on the floor, then on the girl still shielding the smallest ones with her thin, trembling arms. His eyes, old and sharp, lingered for a moment on the faint silver pulse dying beneath the boy's wrist.
"If you stay alone, you die alone," he rasped, his voice a low, gravelly sound that seemed to echo from the very stone. His staff tapped the ground once more—a promise, a threat, an invitation.
Later, the boy would wonder if the glow he had seen was truly fire, or something else entirely — the silver's whisper, the subtle, terrifying hum of Celestia. But, the mysterious old man never answered. He simply led them back through the labyrinthine tunnels, a silent guide in the creeping darkness. The girl's tiny hand was locked around the boy's wrist, clinging so tightly he could feel her pulse hammer against his skin, a fragile beat of life. With the other siblings trailing, they moved as a single, cautious unit.
In deep thought: "I will not be powerless again." The boy pressed a small, dust-grimed hand to his chest, just as he had done countless times since that night, as if he could still feel it there – the silver, the secret. In his blood. Waiting.
The old man had spoken of it, just after leading them into the relative safety of Haven Below, his voice like stone dragged over stone. "When the sky bled silver," he had rasped, his gaze fixed on the scarred horizon, "the world learned to breathe again — in a voice none would ever tame."
The boy hadn't understood all of it then, but the words had clung to him, a cryptic prophecy of his own burgeoning nature
The children stayed together. The boy, with no family left to claim him. The girl, with her sisters clinging to her shoulders like frightened fledgling birds, forever bound by the terror they had shared. And the old man — the enigmatic mentor who taught them how to hold a knife, how to draw a bowstring taut, how to feel for traps hidden beneath crumbling stone, and how to sense the low quake of a glass-back's breath — or any living shadow that waits in the ruins and the endless dark.
Years passed. The boy's veins, for a long time, stayed quiet—until they didn't.
***
The past remembers, even when we don't.
Returning from The Past
Eris jolted back to the present, the echoes of that night still a terrified shriek in his bones. He was hunched on the cold, damp tunnel floor, the storm's distant roar vibrating through the rock, each shudder a brutal reminder of the trauma that shaped their lives in Haven Below. He didn't want to remember, but the past clung to him, heavy and cold.
Life in Haven Below was a constant grind of survival, but it was also... home. Their small dwelling, a pocket carved into the earth, offered a fragile warmth against the cold, dead world above. Days were spent scavenging the wasteland and outer tunnels, their dwindling supplies a constant pressure, pushing them further into treacherous ground. Elder Ruvio, the mysterious man from the past, giving lessons—in hunting, in stealth, in the cryptic nature of Celestia—was relentless, molding Eris' body and sharpening his senses.
Tonight, the air in their dwelling, usually thick with the scent of damp earth and stale dust, suddenly crackled. Eris, hunched over a sputtering lamp, felt the familiar tremor begin deep within his bones. It had been building all day, a restless energy after a particularly grueling training session with the Elder, pushing his control to its frayed edges.
Now, it surged, a silent, silver scream trapped beneath his skin. Faint lines of uncontained light pulsed violently along his forearms, threatening to break through. He clenched his fists, knuckles white, a desperate, internal battle raging. He could feel the familiar, sickening lurch in his gut, the fear that this time, it wouldn't recede.
Across the small space, Kaylah paused mid-stitch, her needle hovering over a worn blanket. Her eyes, sharp and knowing, met his. There was no panic in them, only a calm that felt like an impossible anchor in the rising storm within him. She didn't speak, didn't need to. Slowly, deliberately, she set her mending aside and moved to him, a quiet presence in the flickering lamplight. She knelt, then gently, firmly, placed her cool hand over his trembling ones.
"Breathe, Eris," she murmured, her voice a low, steady current in the chaos. "Just breathe."
Her touch was like a cool stream over burning rock. The chaotic flicker of silver light under his skin began to recede, the oppressive pressure in his head easing, the frantic beat of his heart slowing. He still had to fight, to pull himself back from the brink, but her presence, her unwavering calm, made it possible. He focused on her hand, on the familiar press of her palm, on her steady gaze. Slowly, agonizingly, the brilliant lines faded, dimming to faint embers before vanishing entirely. The air in the room settled, leaving only the faint scent of lamp oil and the quiet hum of their makeshift home.
A moment later, Lisei, who had been meticulously arranging scavenged pebbles into a miniature fort, glanced up. "Is it quiet now?", she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Myrah, already bored with the patchwork fort of blankets and rusted crates, squealed and hurled herself at Eris, wrapping her arms around his neck like a sleepy little bat. "Rabbit story, Eris! A big, bouncy one!"
Eris wheezed at the sudden weight but settled back against the cracked wall, letting her perch like royalty on his shoulders. Just like every other time, the last remnants of the flare's agony melted away under Myrah's touch. A peculiar calm, unlike the focused relief Kaylah offered, washed over him, startling in its abruptness yet utterly familiar. His shoulders slumped, not in exhaustion, but in a profound, immediate ease.
"All right, all right — but this rabbit's gotten into trouble tonight." Kaylah's quiet laughter slipped between the hiss of the old heater. Lisei scooted closer, eyes huge.
"Once upon a time," Eris began solemnly, "there was a white rabbit wearing a golden crown and a blue coat with pockets full of jam."
Myrah gasped. "Jam!"
"Yes — strawberry and thunderberry. One day, the rabbit fell down a hole so deep it went through the middle of the world and popped out in a kingdom made of upside-down trees and rivers that flowed backwards."
Lisei giggled. "Did it drown?"
Eris shook his head dramatically. "Never! It paddled with its ears — and there it met a thousand dragons, all arguing about whose fire was hottest. So the rabbit pulled out a tiny spoon, challenged the dragons to a soup contest, and—"
Myrah squeaked, "Soup dragons!"
Eris, didn't know how to go on with the story, and added whatever comes to his head, following the siblings' absurd idea. With an odd smile, he continued, "—and the dragons boiled themselves into soup so tasty that a lonely prince smelled it from a mountain far away. He rode a snail — a very fast snail — into the upside-down forest, brandishing a sword made of all the moons in the sky. He promised to rescue a princess stuck inside a mirror, but the princess turned the dragons into teapots instead."
Kaylah covered her mouth with her sleeve to hide her laughter. Myrah bounced, giddy, tugging Eris' hair. Lisei just stared, half-horrified, half-awed.
"Did the prince marry her?" Lisei asked, almost afraid to know..
Eris leaned, as if he himself was disappointed and sorry with the ending. "Well, he tried, but she's a wicked witch, not a princess, who almost turned him into a teacup. And the rabbit drank the soup and hopped home with a belly full of dragons and a crown too big for its head."
Myrah snorted a laugh so loud she startled herself. She tucked her head under Eris' chin, already drifting off in a nest of mismatched dreams.
Behind the cracked support beam, Elder Ruvio watched them from the dark. Watched Kaylah's shoulders drop their iron weight for a heartbeat. Watched the youngest settle into sleep, clutching scraps of nonsense and warmth as if they were treasure. He almost laughed at the ridiculous tale — dragons stewed into soup, snail-riding princes — such nonsense had no place in a world gnawed hollow by silver storms and starving teeth.
And yet... he felt it, too: a tiny ember of warmth in old bones too used to cold. A flicker of something he'd buried long before Eris was born. Dragons and rabbits, he thought. Soup and teacups. If only the world were so kind. He shifted deeper into the dark, the faint sounds of muffled giggles trailing after him like ghosts.
For tonight, foolish stories might be enough to keep the deeper shadows away. His knuckles tightened around the iron staff — the binding rods that kept the storm in his blood from rising. He could almost hear the silver river humming inside the boy's veins. His lips, a grim line, moved in a silent whisper, or perhaps a conversation with someone unseen.
"Not yet," he rasped, the words barely a breath. "Not yet. But soon."
Further back, in a deeper, forgotten tunnel where the light from Haven Below never reached, another shadow stirred. This watcher was utterly still, ancient and patient. A single mark glowed faintly on its throat—a painted spiral of silvery ash that pulsed, almost imperceptibly, in time with Eris' heartbeat, miles away. The watcher's breath misted once, a fleeting wisp in the frigid air, then vanished back into stillness. It turned, melting into the ruin's maze—steps soundless, destination unknown.
Tomorrow, the message would reach ears that should never have known the boy's name at all.
The veins remembered. And so did the spiral.
***
In the hush of Haven Below
The next day . . .
The clan's old pipes rattled, carrying warmth and the smell of broth through the narrow burrows. Kaylah's sisters chased each other under the hanging blankets — Lisei giggling when Myrah pretended to be a tunnel ghost. Kaylah hissed for them to hush before they woke the sleeping scavengers nearby — but she was smiling, just a flicker.
She handed Myrah a scrap of dried meat. Lisei snatched it before Myrah could squeal — then Myrah tackled her, and for a moment, the tunnel seemed to breathe like a real home.
Kaylah pretended not to watch Eris as he settled by the pipe mouth — quiet, but not alone. She sat beside him, shoulder brushing his. She felt the warmth under his skin, the faint tremor in his wrist where the comet's silver still dreamed. Her gaze drifted over Myrah's fierce, possessive hold on the meat, a familiar ache twisting in Kaylah's gut. It was a memory not of hunger, but of a deeper, older emptiness – the kind that settled in when you understood that some things, once gone, never truly returned.
She had never told Eris the full truth of that night the tunnels nearly swallowed them whole. She didn't need to — it clung to her like the thin scars at her collarbone, the way her jaw stayed tight even when she laughed at Lisei's pranks. It was the night she couldn't forget; the terror that she and Aris met before they were saved by Elder Ruvio from the glass-back.
The past was still vivid in her mind...
She'd been eleven when the comet's storms tore through their old settlement aboveground — a scattered outpost too close to the poisoned rivers. Their parents had sealed them in a cellar before going out to fix a broken barricade.
They never came back.
Days later, when the air ran thin and the world fell silent, Kaylah clawed the door open herself, dragging Lisei and Myrah down into the dark tunnels where others whispered about Elder Ruvio's clan — the last safe pocket under the old city's bones. Haven Below, they called it. More myth than place, stitched together from rusted scaffolds, half-collapsed rails, and hydro-tunnels that dripped clean water only when storms were kind. Families lived in clusters — twenty, maybe thirty if you counted strays who drifted in with rumors and half-rotten gear. Elder Ruvio's clan had no crown, no banners — only a leader who'd survived long enough to matter, staff in hand, secrets hoarded behind watchful eyes.
Their shelter was little more than a hollow dug into the old subway walls. Blankets patched from scavenged coats. A single battered stove. Pipes overhead that rattled every time the wind above changed. But to Kaylah and her sisters, it was warmth. A promise that monsters wouldn't claw through the dark tonight.
Eris had shared that warmth since Elder Ruvio pulled him from the beast's jaws. And every night after, Kaylah made sure Lisei and Myrah ate first — even if it meant she went hungry. Even if it meant Eris pretended that he'd already eaten when he hadn't.
Tonight, the sisters clung to his sides like pups after bread scraps. Myrah boasted she'd caught a rat (she hadn't). Lisei demanded Eris carve her a knife from scrap bone (Kaylah snorted — "Over my dead body").
Over it all, the tunnels breathed. A shiver in the pipes. The soft thunder of far-off storms clawing at the city's corpse.
And far back, where the dim lamplight finally died, Elder Ruvio leaned on his staff, his eyes half-shadowed beneath his battered, dust-laden hood. He said nothing as he watched Kaylah gently tug Lisei into her lap, a small, protective gesture, and flick Myrah's ear when the younger girl's chatter grew too loud. He said nothing when Eris, looking up, caught him staring—his ancient gaze fixed somewhere beyond them, distant and unreadable. Elder Ruvio simply tapped his staff once on the cold stone, the runes at its tip flickering like lightning sealed in iron.
"If the blood remembers," Elder Ruvio rasped, his voice rough as gravel, cutting through the silence. "Then the shadows do too "Eris opened his mouth, a question forming on his tongue, but the lingering echo of the tap seemed to swallow his words whole.
And somewhere, beyond Haven's makeshift walls, past the dripping tunnels and scrap-metal barricades, something else listened. Breathless. Waiting.
Elder Ruvio's staff tapped the stone once more—a sound that seemed to echo too far down the dark, sinking into the earth itself. He murmured something then, a whisper only the deepest shadows heard. A promise, maybe. Or a warning.
Far beyond, in the black tunnels that even Elder Ruvio's ancient eyes did not pierce, something else listened. Something that remembered the name whispered into blood: Celestia.
***