The echo of that night still lived in his bones, a silent scream that never quite faded. He was hunched on the cold tunnel floor, breath unsteady, the distant storm rumbling through the rock like something huge turning in its sleep.
He didn't want to remember.
But the past never asked permission.
Tonight, the air in their shelter felt wrong.
Eris hunched over a sputtering lamp. The air in the small dwelling, usually thick with damp earth, suddenly began to crackle.
A tremor started deep in his marrow. It had been building all day—a restless energy pushed to the frayed edges by Ruvio's grueling training.
Now, it surged.
A silent, silver scream was trapped beneath his skin.
Faint lines of uncontained light pulsed violently along his forearms. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white, fighting a desperate internal war.
He felt a sickening lurch in his gut. The fear was different tonight. It wasn't just energy; it was a tide, and he was a crumbling dam.
Not now, he thought, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Not here.
The light flared brighter, casting long, jagged shadows against the cave walls. The "home" he had fought to keep warm and safe suddenly felt like a cage. If the Silver broke through now, it wouldn't just be a flare—it would be a beacon for every predator in the tunnels.
Across the small space, Kaylah paused mid-stitch. Her needle hovered over a worn blanket.
Her eyes met his—sharp, knowing, and impossibly calm. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Slowly, she set her mending aside and knelt before him.
She placed her cool hand firmly over his trembling ones.
"Breathe, Eris," she murmured. Her voice was a steady current in the chaos. "Just breathe."
Her touch was water over burning rock. The silver flicker beneath his skin began to recede. The pressure in his skull eased. He fought to pull himself back from the brink, using her palm as his anchor.
He still had to fight it.
But he wasn't fighting alone.
He focused on her hand. On her steady eyes.
Slowly, the brilliant lines faded to embers, then vanished. The air settled. The scent of lamp oil returned.
A moment later, Leo glanced up. He had been meticulously arranging scavenged pebbles into a miniature fort on the floor.
"Is it quiet now?" the boy whispered. His eyes were wide, reflecting the last of the fading silver light.
Before Eris could answer, Myrah squealed. She was already bored with the fort and hurled herself at Eris's neck like a sleepy little bat.
"Rabbit story, Eris!" she demanded, her voice muffled by his tunic. "A big, bouncy one!"
Eris let out a long, shuddering breath. He looked at Kaylah, then at Leo and Myrah. The storm was gone, but the exhaustion remained.
"A rabbit story," Eris managed, his voice raspy. "But only if Leo helps me with the ending."
Leo nodded solemnly, his small hands already moving a pebble to the "gate" of his fort. In the quiet of the cave, the horror of the world above felt miles away—even if they all knew it was closing in.
Eris wheezed as Myrah climbed him, but he settled against the cracked wall, letting her perch like royalty on his shoulders.
As she pressed into him, the last remnants of the Silver flare's agony totally melted away. It wasn't like the focused relief Kaylah provided; this was an abrupt, profound ease.
Something cool and solid, a trinket Myrah always carried, tapped faintly against his arm. Eris barely noticed it, lost in the sudden calm. (1)
His shoulders relaxed. Free from exhaustion. And relief.
"All right, all right," he murmured. "But this rabbit's gotten into trouble tonight."
Kaylah's quiet laughter drifted over the hiss of the old heater. Leo scooted closer, his eyes huge.
Eris' voice dropped to a whisper. "Once upon a time," he began, eyes drifting into memory, "there was a white rabbit wearing a golden crown and a blue coat with pockets full of jam." He spoke the familiar words, a tale told to him long ago, though the teller's face eluded him.
"Jam!" Myrah gasped.
"Yes. And not just Strawberry, there's Thunderberry too. One day, the rabbit fell down a hole so deep it went through the middle of the world. He popped out in a kingdom of upside-down trees and rivers that flowed backward."
"Did he drown?" Leo asked, breathless.
Eris shook his head dramatically. "Never! He paddled with his ears. There, he met a thousand dragons, all arguing about whose fire was hottest. So, the rabbit pulled out a tiny spoon and challenged the dragons to a soup contest."
"Soup dragons!" Myrah squeaked, bouncing.
The story derailed from there. A snail-riding prince. A sword made of moons. Dragons turned into teapots, a not-princess who was definitely a witch.
Eris didn't know how to go on, so he let the siblings' absurd ideas guide him. He smiled, his voice growing more animated.
"—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."
Kaylah covered her mouth with her sleeve to hide her laughter.
"The prince promised to rescue a princess stuck inside a mirror," Eris continued, "but the princess turned the dragons into teapots instead."
Myrah bounced, giddy, tugging at Eris's hair. Leo just stared, half-horrified and half-awed by the chaotic logic.
"Did the prince marry her?" Leo asked, his voice hushed as if afraid of the answer.
Eris leaned in, his expression mirroring the boy's disappointment. "Well, he tried. But it turns out she was a wicked witch, not a princess. She almost turned him into a teacup."
He gave a small, tired shrug. "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's chin, drifting off into a nest of mismatched dreams.
The "very fast snail" had finally reached its destination. Myrah's breathing was deep and rhythmic against Eris's chest, her small hand still clutching his tunic. Beside them, Leo had fallen asleep with his forehead resting against his pebble fortress.
Eris moved to shift Myrah onto her pallet, but Kaylah was already there. She took the girl with practiced grace, tucking a threadbare quilt around her small shoulders.
"The teapot princess?" Kaylah whispered, a playful spark lingering in her eyes. "You're getting desperate, Eris."
"I ran out of dragons," Eris admitted, his voice barely a breath. He sat back, the cool stone of the wall biting through his shirt. The silver lines on his arms were gone, but the skin felt tight, like a drumhead stretched too far.
Kaylah sat beside him, handing him a tin mug of water. Her face grew serious as the flickering lamp cast long shadows between them.
"It's getting harder to hold back, isn't it?" she asked.
Eris looked at his hands. They were still shaking. "It's like a river that's forgotten which way to flow. Ruvio says I need to 'channel' it, but half the time I feel like I'm just trying not to drown."
He looked over at Leo and Myrah. "If I slip... if I really let go... this whole room becomes a furnace. I saw what happened to the trees in the upper vents, Kaylah. They didn't just burn. They turned to ash in a heartbeat."
Kaylah reached out, squeezing his wrist. Her grip was firm—the hands of a builder, a maker.
"That's why you should train using a bow with silver arrows," she said firmly. "Ruvio provides the theory.
Eris nodded, though the fear didn't leave him. He looked toward the dark corner where Ruvio often stood, sensing the Elder's presence even if he couldn't see him.
"Sometimes I think Ruvio isn't just teaching me to use it," Eris whispered. "I think he's teaching me how to survive it."
Kaylah didn't have an answer for that. She just leaned her head against his shoulder for a brief moment—a rare gesture of vulnerability—before standing up to blow out the lamp.
"Sleep," she commanded. "Tomorrow, we start to hunt. And you'll need every bit of that 'thunderberry jam' energy you can find."
As the light died, the room vanished into ink. But in the silence, Eris could still hear it: a faint, high-pitched hum in the back of his mind. The Silver was waiting.
***
Behind a cracked support beam, Elder Ruvio watched from the shadows.
He saw Kaylah's shoulders finally drop their iron weight. He saw the youngest children settle into sleep, clutching nonsense and warmth like treasure.
He almost laughed at the ridiculous tale. Soup dragons and snail-riding princes—such things had no place in a world gnawed hollow by silver storms.
For a few minutes, the Iron Order and the Silver-burn didn't exist. There was only the teapot princess and the very fast snail.
And yet, he felt a tiny ember of warmth in his old bones. It was a flicker of something he had buried long before Eris was born.
If only the world were so kind, he thought, his knuckles tightening around his iron staff. He could hear the silver river humming inside the boy's veins, a storm barely held at bay by the rhythm of his staff's binding rods.
Ruvio stepped back into the corridor, his boots silent on the stone. He didn't just hear the children's laughter; he felt the resonance of it. It was a frequency—a vibration of life that the "Spiral" could track just as easily as a wolf tracks blood.
He touched the iron staff. It was cold. Cold enough to remind him that while Eris told stories of rabbits, the real world was currently sharpening its teeth.
Further back, in a forgotten tunnel where the light of Haven never reached, another shadow stirred.
This watcher was ancient and patient. On its throat, a single mark glowed: a spiral of silvery ash. It pulsed in perfect time with Eris's heartbeat, miles away.
The watcher's breath misted once in the frigid air, then vanished. It turned, melting into the ruins with soundless steps.
Tomorrow, the message would reach ears that should never have known the boy's name.
The veins remembered. And so did the spiral.
***