Siluman Novels & Stories

Julian whispered. The basin didn't splash; it erupted. The liquid moonlight, now tainted by our shared blood and Julian's necrotic stone, rose into the air like a sentient snake. It wrapped around Silas’s wrists and throat, turning into heavy, glowing shackles of green and silver. Silas let out a choked, agonizing sound, his muscles bulging as he fought the literal weight of his own heritage.

Inside lay a single sheet of vellum, wrapped tightly around a small, glowing shard of Amberite—the highly volatile mineral used to stabilize high-tier solar magic. Silas leaned over my shoulder, his large, scarred hand flattening against the small of my back to anchor me as I unrolled the parchment across the marble balustrade. The document wasn't a standard military order. It was a precise, terrifyingly detailed architectural blueprint of a massive, wheel-shaped mechanism suspended over a deep-sea cavern.

The man standing in front of me was frail. His height made him stoop. The moonlight captured his sunken eyes just right. He held a tome so thick I feared he would fall over. Despite its size it was a beautiful book. The outside was shiny black. Jewels dotted the front. The back was imbued with bright gold filigree. The man stood on an altar made of the same stuff. It was shiny black. It almost looked like water. I wanted so badly to reach out and touch it but I stopped myself. Something about this felt like a test. I don’t know why I got that impression but I dug my toes into the earth and clasped my hands behind my back.

"However, you failed to check the inventory logs for Silos 5 through 8." "What does she mean?" Vane asked, panic edging into his voice. Tristan’s fingers flew across the keyboard, bringing up the inventory logs. He scanned the data, his eyes widening in absolute horror. "It’s not grain," Tristan whispered. "The eastern silos do not contain wheat," Vespera’s recording confirmed, her voice perfectly serene. "They contain heavily pulverized, unrefined Aether-slag. A byproduct of the deep mines. It is highly volatile, extremely toxic, and when mixed with the kinetic friction of the loading chutes..."

A pulse of light ran through the symbols closest to my body like ripples in water when a stone is dropped. “The stone reacts to body heat,” Silas said without looking up. Calm, casual, like explaining something expected. “It’s luminescent mineral. Common in formations this old. Nothing important.” Perfect lie. Delivered with the ease of someone who had practiced it for weeks. Alaric was twenty meters away, beside a column, speaking with Damián. I saw him turn his head when the runes lit up. Saw him hear Silas’s explanation. Saw his eyes narrow a fraction.

I gripped the railing. Silas—or what was left of him—stood seven feet tall. His left arm was a piston of chrome and carbon fiber. Silver plates were bolted directly into his skull and down his spine. He didn't shift. He stayed in a grotesque, half-hunched position, his eyes glowing with a red, synthetic light.

"And I’m the person who can show you how to mute the signal. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to wait here until the King comes to drag his 'property' back to the palace." The word property hit me like a splash of acid. "How?" I managed to ask. Silas stepped closer. He didn't smell like the city. He smelled like ozone and burnt sugar. He held out a small, jagged piece of dark glass—obsidian, etched with runes that seemed to drink the moonlight. "This is a dampener," he whispered. "Hold it against the mark. It won't break the bond—nothing can do that yet—but it will create a vacuum. He won't be able to feel you. And you won't have to feel the weight of his guilt."