The silence stayed with him.
Not the quiet kind that came and went, broken by passing footsteps or the click of pipes. This one was thicker. Heavier. It wasnât something around him. Rather, something in him. It settled into the hollow space beneath his ribs like a second heart, pulsing dull and cold.
Outside, rain drummed steadily against the rooftops. Ordinary rain. No screaming winds, no dancing lights, no shifting gravity. Just the weight of the world pulling water down from slate-colored skies. The window above the cot rattled every few seconds, and the gutter outside coughed whenever it clogged.
Liam didnât move.
He had crawled towards the edge of the cot where he now sat. Shoulders hunched. Elbows on knees. The metal fingers of his steamgraft rested limp between his boots. The other hand gripped the edge of the frame hard enough to ache.
The steamgraft had gone cold. He hadnât wound the pressure regulator or fed more coal into the fuel chamber. It hissed only once when he shifted his weight, then fell still again. Without the usual background of clicks and whirs, the room felt emptier than it had in months.
His coat was damp with sweat from the walk back. He had let it fall where it slipped from his shoulders. It landed with a soft, heavy fold on the floorboards, leaving behind a faint outline of grime and soot from the road. He didn't care.
A faint ache in his ribs reminded him to breathe. The shoulder wound still hadnât entirely clotted. Bandages from three days ago clung too tightly to torn skin. He could have changed them. Could have cleaned them. Could have reached out for help. But who would he call?
No one.
He blinked. Blinked again.
A hunger pang curled somewhere in his gut. He ignored it.
There was food. Rations in the tin under the cot, a half-bitten biscuit from the trip, a bottle of pickled greens someone had given him last season that heâd never opened. Still edible. Probably.
But eating meant standing. It meant reaching, choosing, caring.
He stayed where he was.
A droplet traced its way down the back of his neck. At first, he thought it was more rain. Then he realized it was sweat. The room wasnât cold. Just still. Stale.
Peter would have cracked a joke by now. Something stupid. Something with that tilted grin, like he didnât even realize how easily the words came to him.
He was probably warm, dry, laughing even. Somewhere soft. Somewhere clean. The priestess looked like she had all the answers. The kind of person who didnât leave when things got hard.
He tried not to imagine the two of them talking. Not about him. Not about anything.
It shouldnât have mattered. But it did.
His jaw clenched.
Peter had made his choice.
Liam had made his.
That was the deal. No one owed anyone anything. Theyâd gotten out alive. They hadnât promised anything more.
He told himself that. Over and over. Like a prayer.
The rain outside shifted, heavier now. A wet gust slapped the windowpane and then rolled away, making the frame creak faintly. The fire in the buildingâs central boiler two floors down must have died, because the pipes along the far wall began ticking as they cooled.
He looked at the cracked mug on the shelf. At the folded blanket he still hadnât used. At the gear-shaped stain on the wall where condensation had eaten through the plaster.
This was home.
No one had touched it. No one had entered while he was gone. Nothing had changed.
But it didnât feel like his anymore.
He looked at the door. Then away.
Somewhere, in the cityâs thousands of levels and alleys and lifts and wards, Peter was walking. Maybe toward something. Maybe not.
But not here.
Not anymore.
And Liam⦠Liam didnât even know where to go from here.
He let out a slow breath, one he hadnât realized he was holding.
Then he leaned forward, head in his hands, and let the silence settle in fully.
â¦
The pain set in by morning.
Not the sharp, immediate kind like broken bone or blade. Liam could handle those. This was deeper. Crawling. Like something inside his marrow had been hollowed out and left to rot.
He woke curled on the cot, one arm draped over his eyes as if that could block out the headache pounding behind them. His mouth tasted of rust and bile. Every joint ached, every breath dragged like wet cloth through a furnace. He shifted, but slowly. The steamgraft on his right arm didnât move. It lay dead at his side, cold and inert, the boiler long since cooled. No hiss. No pulse of pressure. Just weight. He wished the rest of his body were that quiet.
He hadnât taken any plasm in days.
That was the problem.
He sat up. A cold sweat clung to his back, dampening the undershirt heâd never bothered changing out of. The rain continued on throughout the night, leaving a faint chill in the air. Drops still clung to the boiler pipes, condensation thick with unsaid words.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
His stomach growled, but the thought of eating turned it. Instead, he reached for the chipped tin cup on the shelf, filled it with lukewarm water from the valve, and drank. It barely helped.
The cot creaked as he stood. His legs held, but only barely.
Withdrawal didnât kill you. Not like a wound. Not like poison or fire. It just wore you down, layer by layer, until you stopped caring about anything but relief.
He'd seen it before. The twitching hands. The vacant stares. The desperation. That creeping hunger, the kind that never touched your gut but wrapped tight around your soul.
Liam wasnât there yet.
He told himself that, again and again.
There were places nearby. Dens tucked into alleys, behind rusted gates and boarded windows. He knew where they were. They always opened again the day after a typhoon. Like flowers blooming after rain.
All he had to do was walk a few blocks. Knock three times. Offer a few coins. Or even the most meagre of the cores he had collected. It would be over quick. A hit would clear his head, melt the pain, let the world soften just enough for him to breathe.
He could almost feel it already. That slow rush. That quiet.
But he didnât move.
He sat back down, elbows on knees, hands clasped together like a man praying.
He wasnât.
There was no one left to pray to.
Instead, he counted. Not numbers, just seconds. He measured them by the tick of the radiator, the occasional drip from the ceiling. He let them pass without acting, because sometimes that was all he could do.
Wait, and not move.
His body itched. Not on the skin, but underneath it. Like something was burrowing through his blood. His right arm, the mechanical one, was silent. Cool and still. It didnât understand what the rest of him was going through. It couldnât.
He hated how easy it had become to rely on it.
The worst part wasnât the shaking. It wasnât the headaches or the sweats or even the nausea.
It was the silence.
Because with the world finally quiet, there was nothing left to distract him from the thoughts that crawled in. From the memory of Peterâs voice. From the sound of the door closing behind him.
Liam leaned back against the wall. The boards were cold. He welcomed it.
He had chosen this.
He could survive it too.
â¦
The rain had stopped.
The sound had faded without fanfare, leaving the world thick with its absence. A vacuum left behind. Liam sat still, back to the wall, the faintest ring of damp in his shirt where it clung to the small of his back. His breath was even now, but shallow, as if he were conserving the strength he might still need.
He had eaten earlier. Half a ration bar, brittle and dry. Drank water from the tap. Stood long enough to piss in the tin sink and rinse his face before returning to the cot like it had called him. The steamgraft still lay across his lap. Cold. Useless. He hadnât tried to re-ignite it.
There were no dreams. Just short stutters of vision and noise in the darkness behind his eyes. No sound. No light. Nothing concrete. His body had rested, in the technical sense, but his mind hadnât stopped once. A slow churn behind the skull. Thoughts that formed half-syllables and aborted questions, eaten by the dark before they became real.
He didn't want real. Real hurt more.
Peterâs face returned anyway. Bright-eyed. Naive. The kind of person who asked questions he already knew the answer to, just to see how you'd react. That stubborn way he believed things would work out. That music, always on the edge of his voice, even when he wasnât singing.
He had left.
Not just gone. He had chosen it.
The bitterness crawled up Liamâs throat like bile. He told himself it was for the best. That Peter belonged in that world. The one with healing and warm meals and people who didn't flinch when you walked in. They werenât meant to be anything. They had shared a road, not a path.
Still, he couldnât forget the way Peter had looked back. That unearned certainty in his voice when he said they would meet again. As if the cityâs size didnât matter. As if fate had ever cared about people like Liam.
He shifted, feeling the tension in his back like a wire drawn tight. He didnât cry. Not again. But there was a dull ache behind his eyes that hadnât faded since the storm. Physical pain was easier. It came with rules. You bled. You bruised. You mended. Emotional pain didn't follow any pattern. It just settled in and refused to leave.
He looked down at the boiler casing of his dead arm. No flicker. No whine of pressure equalizing. No glow behind the gauge. The limb didnât even feel like part of him anymore. Just a weight he had to carry.
He should get it fixed.
He should want to get it fixed.
Instead, he stood with the limp weight still hanging from his shoulder, crossed the room, and took the chipped cup from the shelf. He filled it from the tap. The water was cold and tasted like rust. He drank it anyway.
The air outside was shifting now. Not loud, but present. The kind of quiet that only cities could make when they were trying to wake up. Pipes warming under stone. Boots on wet gravel. A dog barking far away. Life resumed.
But not here.
This part of Daventry stayed dead longer than the rest.
He set the cup back down and stood still, letting the silence stretch. A faint metallic scent drifted in through the cracks around the door, mingled with the sour bite of city runoff and old smoke. Somewhere far off, a freight horn sounded, deep, slow, and deliberate. Pipes groaned in the walls as the main lines re-pressurized. The storm had passed. Not that you could see it from in here. But the city had started to breathe again. Not magic, this time. Just machines, waking up.
His gaze fell on the shelf.
The vial was still there.
That single drop of plasm. The last one. Unchanged.
He stepped toward it and picked it up between two fingers. The light caught the liquid inside. It shimmered faintly. Not with magic. Just memory. It would be so easy. One hit. One breath. The weight would lift. The ache would dull. He would forget how hollow he felt.
For a little while.
His grip tightened.
Then loosened.
He put it back.
Not today.
He hadnât beaten the feeling. The need. The insatiable desire to consume that liquid. He knew that. It never really went away. But he hadnât lost, either.
That mattered.
He stood for a long time after that. Watching the door.
He told himself it was just habit. That he was just thinking. That he wasnât hoping for a knock. That he didnât want to hear a familiar voice. That he didnât want company.
He told himself a lot of things.
Most of them werenât true.
His gaze flicked to the corner. The cot waited. So did the silence.
Maybe Peter was already in some chapel hall, learning about gods Liam couldnât hear. Maybe he was laughing. Singing. Making friends.
Maybe he was forgetting Liam's name.
He had told Peter to go.
He had pushed him away.
Because that was the one thing Liam had always been good at.
A sound broke the stillness.
Soft.
A knock.
Liam froze. Not from fear. Just surprise.
No one knocked on his door.
Not for anything good, at any rate.
He stayed still a moment longer. Listening. As if it might have been a mistake. As if the storm had played a trick and left a ghost behind.
Then it came again.
Three raps. Firm. Measured.
He stepped forward.
The vial stayed on the shelf.
The steamgraft stayed cold.
And with the door looming closer, he prepared to open it and see what the new day would bring.