The blue heart of the Void-Stray didn't just sit in Caspian's stomach; it unraveled.
As he stood in the flickering light of his clinic, he felt as though he had swallowed a handful of needles made of ice. The "cold lightning" expanded, threading through his veins, turning his blood into something heavier, something that hummed. This was the Initial Grafting, the moment where the soul either accepts the foreign essence or is torn apart by it.
"Doc? Your eyes..." Kael's voice cracked. The boy backed away, his pipe clattering to the floor.
Caspian turned to a cracked mirror hanging above the washbasin. His pupils had bled out, turning his eyes into solid, shimmering pools of indigo. Faint, ethereal veins—like the roots of a ghost-tree—pulsed beneath the skin of his temples.
"I'm fine, Kael," Caspian said, though his voice sounded like two pieces of flint grinding together. "Go to the market. Buy three black candles and a vial of belladonna. Use the emergency credits in the floorboard."
"But the Church—if the Inquisitors smell the herbs—"
"Go," Caspian commanded. The word carried a weight that made the air in the room thicken.
Kael didn't argue. He scrambled out the door, leaving Caspian alone with the mutilated corpse of the Void-beast and the burgeoning madness in his mind.
The Weight of the Vellum
Caspian collapsed into his chair, clutching his head. Inside his mind, the Silent Gallery flickered in and out of existence. He saw the Vellum of Souls again, its skin-like surface rippling with new instructions.
Sequence 9: The Mourner Requirement 2: Recite the Lament of the Unseen. Requirement 3: Witness a death that no one else remembers.
Warning: If the Lament is spoken without a Witness-Death, the soul will become an 'Echo-Wraith,' forever repeating its own name until the island falls.
Caspian understood. The power system of this world was a trap. The Church of the Iron Lung preached that "God-Grafts" were a holy burden, but the Vellum revealed the truth: it was a predatory evolution. To advance, he had to ritualize his own humanity away.
He looked at the clock. It was nearly the Hour of the Heavy Breath, the time when the Great Pump at the center of the island slowed its output to conserve energy. The slums would soon be shrouded in a thick, yellow fog of recycled exhaust and carbon.
It was the perfect time for a death that no one would notice.
The Altar of the Forgotten
Kael returned twenty minutes later, his face pale and sweat-streaked. He handed Caspian the candles and the belladonna.
"The Inquisitors are out," Kael whispered, his chest heaving. "They found a 'Hollowed' near the ventilation shafts. They're purging the whole block with white-fire."
Caspian took the items. "Stay here. Lock the door. Do not open it for anyone—not even me—unless I knock the rhythm of the Great Pump."
Caspian stepped out into the "Gutters." The street was a narrow metal catwalk suspended over a thousand-foot drop into the Grey Void. Below, the clouds churned like a sea of lead. Above, the massive underside of the upper-city glowed with the artificial golden lights of the rich.
He moved with a new, predatory grace. The Mourner pathway gave him a heightened sensitivity to the "spiritual temperature" of his surroundings. He could feel the cold spots where people had died in agony, and the hot, sticky pockets of desperate life.
He found what he was looking for in a dead-end alleyway behind a smelting plant. An old man, his lungs ruined by years of breathing coal-dust and "Iron-Soot," lay curled on a pile of rusted shavings. He was a "Scrap-Licker," one of the thousands of nameless workers who spent their lives cleaning the God-Chains for a pittance of oxygen.
The man was dying. His breath came in wet, jagged gasps. His eyes were milky and unfocused. To the world, he was already a ghost.
Caspian knelt beside him. He placed the three black candles in a triangle around the dying man and lit them. He didn't feel pity; he felt a terrifying, clinical focus.
"Who are you?" Caspian whispered.
The man's head lolled. "Twenty... seven..." he wheezed. "Chain-gang... twenty-seven..."
He didn't even have a name anymore. He was a number on a ledger. A death no one would remember.
Caspian opened the vial of belladonna and tipped a drop onto the man's tongue, numbing the pain of his final seconds. Then, as the man's heart gave its final, fluttering thump, Caspian closed his indigo eyes and began to recite the Lament of the Unseen.
"The sun is a lie told by the blind. The sky is a tomb lined with silver. I mourn the breath that never reached the lungs. I mourn the name that was never spoken. I am the shadow that remains when the candle dies."
As the final word left his lips, the black candles flared with a brilliant, violet flame. The shadows in the alleyway detached themselves from the walls and began to crawl toward the old man's body.
Caspian felt a sudden, violent tug at his soul.
He wasn't just standing in an alley anymore. He was standing in the Silent Gallery, but it was no longer empty. A new statue had appeared—a statue of a man in tattered rags, his face a mask of weary peace.
The Vellum of Souls unrolled, and a line of text turned from blood-red to shimmering gold:
[Sequence 9: Mourner — Digested 15%]
A surge of power erupted from Caspian's core. His senses expanded. He could hear the heartbeat of a rat three floors up; he could see the flow of Aether in the air like glowing currents of water. He felt he could melt into any shadow, becoming as invisible as a forgotten memory.
But the price was immediate. A wave of crushing sorrow hit him—the collective grief of everyone who had died in the Gutters that night. He saw their faces, heard their final prayers. If he didn't have the "Curator" persona to distance himself, his mind would have shattered.
The Shadow's Arrival
"Beautifully executed," a voice remarked from the mouth of the alley.
Caspian spun around, his hand reaching for the scalpel hidden in his sleeve.
Standing at the entrance was a man dressed in an impeccable white suit—a jarring contrast to the filth of the Gutters. He held a silver-topped cane and wore a monocle over his right eye. No, not a monocle—it was a Clockwork Lens that whirred as it focused on Caspian.
"An unaffiliated Beyonder," the man said, his smile thin and sharp. "And a Mourner, no less. Rare. Most people choose the Path of the Iron Lung so they can feel 'holy' while they choke the world."
Caspian kept his voice low and cold. "Who are you?"
"I am a collector of curiosities," the man said, tapping his cane. "And you, Doctor Thorne, have recently come into possession of something that belongs to my employer. A Prism of the First Dawn."
Caspian felt the coldness of the Silent Gallery settle into his bones. He realized he couldn't fight this man—not yet. The man radiated a pressure that felt like an entire island was resting on his shoulders. A Sequence 7, at least.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Caspian lied, his face an expressionless mask.
"Lying to a 'Truth-Seeker' is a poor strategy," the man chuckled. "But I'm not here to kill you. Not tonight. I'm here to offer an invitation. There is a Masquerade being held by the Governor in three days. Someone is planning to 'assassinate' a God. We need a Mourner to handle the... remains."
The man tossed a heavy, iron coin toward Caspian. It featured the image of a lung entwined with thorns.
"Think of it as a job interview. If you survive, you might find out why the sun really went out."
The man stepped back into the yellow fog and vanished as if he had never been there.
Caspian looked down at the iron coin. The "Spirit-Hunger" in his gut growled. He was no longer a simple doctor. He was a player in a game that spanned the stars, and the first move had just been made.
He returned to the clinic, his mind already racing. He needed to convene the Silent Gallery. He needed his "Members" to gather intelligence on the Governor.
As he knocked the rhythm of the Great Pump on his door, he whispered to himself:
"I am the Curator. And the world is my gallery."