Page 3 of Death’s Gentle Hand

The Shape of Silence

Damian

T he city breathed differently before dawn.

Damian could feel it in the way the air moved through the narrow alleys of Cinder Market, carrying scents that told stories he'd learned to read like scripture.

Minerals and ash from the underground steam vents that heated the illegal stalls.

The sharp tang of fear-sweat as vendors arranged their wares in the pre-dawn darkness.

The metallic bite of time-magic bleeding through cracks in the cobblestones.

He moved through the market like a ghost, fingertips brushing walls polished smooth by decades of desperate hands.

Rough obsidian, marble from ruined temples, warm wood—each surface mapped the city for him better than sight.

His feet found every loose stone and hidden gap where runoff whispered beneath the cobbles.

Vendors setting up created a percussion of metal on stone, glass clinking against ceramic, fabric whispering as it was shaken out and displayed—a symphony only Damian could fully decipher.

Footsteps echoed differently depending on what people carried: the heavy tread of those burdened with time-debt, the quick patter of children still too young to understand the weight of years, the careful shuffle of the elderly who moved like they were rationing every step.

Damian paused at a steam vent, feeling the heat wash over his face while he listened to the sounds below.

Somewhere in the depths of Varos, machinery hummed with a rhythm that reminded him uncomfortably of a massive heartbeat.

He'd been noticing it more lately, that pulse beneath the city's foundation.

It shouldn't have been there. The old texts spoke of Varos as a living organism, but that was just poetry. Wasn't it?

He’d always been sensitive to the city’s moods, but lately, it felt more personal. As if something in Varos was listening—and answering—just for him.

“Strange morning, healer.”

The voice belonged to Old Henrik, a relic vendor whose stall smelled of tarnished silver and desperate hope. Henrik's voice carried the particular rasp of someone who'd sold too many years of his throat's youth, grinding stone made vocal.

“They're all strange lately,” Damian replied, following Henrik's scent to the familiar stall. Cloves and copper, old parchment and the bitter herbs used to preserve magical artifacts.

“Stranger than most.” Henrik's weathered hands pressed something small and cold into Damian's palm. “Iron pendant. Shaped like a closed eye. Protection against reapers.”

Damian felt the weight of the charm, its rough iron surface warm from Henrik's touch. The craftsmanship was crude but earnest, the kind of thing desperate people made when they needed to believe in protection. “I don't believe in Death as a person,” he said carefully. “Only as a process.”

Henrik's laugh was like gravel in a tin cup. “Process don't explain what's been happening lately. Dead things walking, time running backward in the deep places. Even the rats are nervous.”

Damian handed back the charm, but Henrik's words followed him as he moved through the market.

Other conversations drifted past, fragments of fear and confusion that painted a picture he didn't want to see.

A Hollow had spoken a dead woman's name before dissolving into ash.

Time-clocks were running backward in the middle of the night.

Shadows moved independently of their casters.

The word “leaking” kept recurring, whispered like a prayer or a curse.

People said the Veil between life and death was becoming permeable, that the boundary between worlds was wearing thin.

Damian tried to dismiss it as superstition, but the rhythm beneath the city's foundation seemed to pulse stronger with each mention.

He pressed his palm against a wall to steady himself and felt it again: vibrations beneath the stone, like a massive heart beating just under the city's skin.

The sensation ran up his arm and settled in his chest, foreign and intimate at the same time.

It unsettled him deeply, made his breath catch and his hands shake.

He told himself it was fatigue—magical exhaustion explained strange sensations. Yet he kept pressing his hands to every wall he passed, seeking that pulse, needing to feel it again.

The walk back to his clinic took him through the awakening streets of Veil Row, where the desperate and the dispossessed made their homes in the spaces between legal and condemned.

Here, the buildings leaned against each other like drunk friends, their foundations undermined by decades of illegal excavation.

Magic bled from the stones in visible streams, purple and silver threads that smelled like ozone and copper.

Damian climbed the worn stairs to his clinic, following the handrail that generations of desperate hands had worn smooth. His key slipped into the lock as naturally as breath, and he pushed open the door to find Corrin already waiting.

“You're early,” he said, setting down his kit by the familiar table.

“Couldn't sleep.” Corrin’s words were tight, their movements sharp as they set a teacup before him. “Brought tea.”

The scent hit him before Corrin finished speaking: borrowed years.

Herbal infusions tied to emotional memories of people who'd sold their happiest moments to the Time Exchange.

The tea tasted of summer afternoons and first love, providing comfort without true nourishment.

It was expensive, illegal, and absolutely the kind of thing Corrin would procure when they needed to feel like they were doing something useful.

“What's the occasion?” Damian asked, accepting the warm cup.

“Can't a friend bring tea without ulterior motives?”

“You can. You just never do.”

Corrin's laugh was forced, brittle around the edges. “The time-clocks in three districts froze last night. Completely stopped. The Exchange is claiming mechanical failure, but...”

“But?” Damian settled into his chair, feeling the familiar creaks and gives that told him he was home.

“But mechanical failures don't make hourglass sand float upward.” Corrin paused, voice lowering. “Or cause frost to form on the inside of the glass. Or make the damn things hum lullabies.”

Damian nearly choked on his tea. “Lullabies?”

“Mrs. Li heard it first. Same tune her grandmother used to sing, the one about sailing to the far shore. Now half the district is humming it without knowing why.”

The tea suddenly tasted like ash in Damian's mouth. His mother had sung that lullaby, the one about crossing dark waters to find peace. It was an old Ashen Accord song, one of the few that had survived the purges. “Probably just coincidence,” he said, but his voice sounded hollow even to himself.

“Yeah,” Corrin said. “Probably.”

They sat in comfortable silence, sharing the stolen comfort of borrowed memories.

Damian could feel Corrin's worry radiating from them like heat from a forge, but he didn't know how to address it.

How could he explain the pulse beneath the city, the sense of being watched, the dreams that felt more real than waking?

Their peace was shattered by the sound of breaking glass and desperate sobbing. Someone was trying to force their way through the protective ward on his door, and the magical barrier was fighting back with sparks and the smell of burnt ozone.

Damian was on his feet before the second impact, moving toward the door by sound and instinct. “Corrin, get the emergency kit.”

He heard them moving behind him, gathering supplies with practiced urgency. The sobbing outside grew more desperate, punctuated by the wet sound of blood hitting stone.

Damian opened the door and was immediately hit by the sharp scent of blood, copper-bright and fresh.

Someone was slumped against his threshold, breath hitching in quick, painful bursts.

He reached out, hands finding the bony shoulder of a boy—thin, tense, trembling under his touch.

The torn fabric was sticky with blood, and as Damian’s fingers traced along Brinn’s back, he found deep, ragged gashes, still weeping warmth.

Brinn Kelloway—sixteen at most, if Damian judged by the voice and the quick, frantic muttering—one of Veil Row’s sharper thieves, and now he sounded terrified, murmuring broken words Damian couldn’t quite make out.

“Inside,” Damian said, helping the boy to his feet. “Corrin, clear the table.”

Brinn's weight was almost nothing against Damian’s arm, light and shivering, like supporting an injured bird.

As he guided Brinn inside, Damian’s fingers skimmed over torn fabric and sticky warmth, finding deep, precise gashes along the boy’s back.

The wounds were too clean to be accidental—sliced in deliberate lines, the edges raw and weeping.

Damian traced the pattern gently, feeling each jagged line with practiced care.

Someone had carved a message, and they'd used Brinn’s flesh as their parchment.

“Who did this?” Damian asked, guiding the boy to the examining table.

“Shadow man,” Brinn whispered, his voice thick with pain and terror. “Tall as a building, still as death. Eyes like holes in the world.”

Damian turned slightly toward Corrin, catching the subtle shift in their breathing—the kind of pause that meant Corrin was just as unsettled as he was.

Trauma could cause all kinds of hallucinations, especially in someone young and frightened.

But there was something in Brinn’s voice, a quality of absolute conviction that was hard to dismiss.

“Where did you see this shadow man?” Damian asked, beginning to clean the wounds.

“Everywhere.” Brinn's hands were shaking, his whole body vibrating with exhaustion and fear. “Rooftops, alleyways, watching from corners. Never moves, never blinks. Doesn't displace air when he walks.”

“People don't walk without displacing air,” Corrin said gently. “That's not how bodies work.”