The courier's footsteps faded into the distance. Damian closed the door and leaned against it, feeling the envelope's edges with trembling fingers.
He felt his way to the box where he kept the other notices, each one a reminder of the price of compassion. The Time Exchange was patient, but not infinitely so. Eventually, they'dcome for him, and all his good intentions wouldn't save him from the Hollowing.
Corrin found the box when they returned with fresh soul-tonics, and he could hear the sharp intake of breath as they read the accumulated notices.
“Shit, Damian. Seven months?”
“It's fine,” he said, not meeting their eyes out of habit.
“Like hell it's fine.” He heard the jingle of crystallized time, the soft weight of years made solid. “Take it. Cover the debt.”
Damian knocked the pouch from their hands, hearing time-crystals scatter across the floor like fallen rain. “I don't want your charity.”
“It's not charity, it's survival!”
“It's pity,” Damian snarled. “You think I can't handle my own problems?”
“I think you're trying to get yourself killed, and I'm too fond of you to let that happen.”
In the end, Corrin left with their crystals and their anger, the door slamming hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Damian was alone again, surrounded by the familiar sounds of his trade and the weight of his choices.
He prepared his hands for tomorrow's healing, rewrapping them in blessed cloth that had once belonged to his mother. The fabric was soft with age, and it still carried the faintest trace of her scent—rosemary and something else, something he'd never been able to name. As he worked, he found himself murmuring half-remembered prayers to gods he claimed not to believe in.
The ritual soothed him, even as he told himself it was meaningless superstition. But the words felt right on his tongue, and the cloth grew warm against his skin. Maybe faith was just another kind of magic, too subtle for the Time Exchange to regulate.
That night, Damian dreamed of absolute silence. Not peaceful quiet, but the complete absence of sound, breath, heartbeat. He was drowning in stillness, searching for something he couldn't name but desperately needed. The dream felt more real than waking, more true than the pain that defined his days.
He woke breathless and aching, his chest tight with inexplicable longing. The city's night sounds filtered through his windows—distant weeping and whispered prayers, the mechanical hum of magic and misery. But underneath it all was that silence, patient and vast, waiting for him to call its name.
Unable to return to sleep, Damian felt his way to the window and listened to Varos sleep fitfully around him. The night air carried the scent of coal smoke and desperation, punctuated by the quiet sobs of those who couldn't afford tomorrow. He held Mrs. Kess's charm in his palm, feeling its strange warmth pulse against his skin.
The charm pulsed in time with his heart, and for a moment he could sense something answering—a presence quiet but undeniable, as if the dream-silence had taken form.
Something moved past his window, different from the usual shuffle of the desperate. This footstep was lighter, accompanied by a sound he hadn't heard in twenty years—humming. Not the wordless moaning of the Hollowed, but a real melody, broken and sweet.
The tune cut through him like a blade. It was his mother's song, the one she'd sung while performing illegal soulbinding rituals. The melody she'd hummed while bleeding power into protective wards, her voice getting weaker with each verse. The last sound he'd heard before the spell went wrong and took his sight along with her life.
The memory hit him like a wave, and suddenly he was seven again, hiding in the closet while his mother fought to save himfrom the Time Exchange's attention. He could smell the herbs she'd burned, feel the heat of magic gone wrong, taste the copper of blood and the bitter ash of failure.
To ground himself, Damian pressed a heated soul-needle against his own fingers, using the familiar pain to anchor his scattered thoughts. The smell of burned flesh filled his clinic, sharp and immediate, pulling him back to the present.
He felt around for his journal, finding the section he'd labeled “fragments” by its rougher paper. Strange occurrences filled these pages, things he couldn't explain but couldn't forget. He added another entry, fingers tracing patterns only he could read.
Damian sat in the complete darkness that was his constant companion and whispered a single name to the silence: “Lennar.”
His voice broke on the syllables, carrying years of guilt and longing. His brother's name, unspoken for so long it felt foreign on his tongue. Lennar, who'd chosen safety over principle, who'd joined the Time Exchange to survive. Lennar, who'd stopped visiting when Damian's work became too dangerous to ignore.
The ache in his chest wasn't just borrowed pain now. It was grief, pure and sharp and his own. For the brother he'd lost to compromise, for the mother who'd died protecting him, for the countless patients he couldn't save.
As dawn approached, Damian finally dozed in his chair, exhaustion overcoming memory. In his dreams, the silence was no longer empty. Something waited within it, watchful. For the first time, Damian felt ready to call it by name.
And in the growing light of another gray morning that he couldn't see but could feel in the warming air, Damian Vale began to understand that some things were worth waiting for, even if he didn't know what they were yet.
Chapter 2
The Shape of Silence
Damian
