Chapter 18: The Silver Thread
The wooden door swung shut behind him with a soft, final click, sealing away the hum of the mirrors. The sudden silence was a physical weight. Zixuan leaned against the damp wall, gasping, and stared at his arm.
The silver lines weren't fading. Under the erratic flicker of a wall-mounted gas lamp, they gleamed dully, etched into his skin like metallic tattoos. They didn’t hurt. That was the worst part. They were cold, and they carried a faint, persistent tug, a subtle magnetic pull deeper into the corridor.
The silver knows you.
He shoved himself upright, clutching the arm to his chest as if he could hide it. The corridor was a throat. Peeling burgundy wallpaper hung in limp scrolls, revealing the grey, sweating stone beneath. The air tasted of wet cellar and burnt candle wick. The floor was uneven flagstone, slick with condensation.
And the shadows. The gas jets threw weak, jumping light, but the shadows they cast didn’t match the walls. They were elongated, twisted things—the silhouettes of sculptures that weren’t there. He passed a niche holding a half-formed figure of pale clay; it had too many arms, all reaching, and its featureless head was turned toward him.
The tug in his arm intensified near a door on his left. It was plain, oak, but etched into the grain was a pattern. A swirling, spiraling design that exactly matched the tracery now rooted in his veins. The silver under his skin flared with a soft, blue-tinged light.
He shouldn’t. Every sane, screaming cell told him to run past it.
But he thought of Mingyuan’s boisterous laugh in their dorm, clapping him on the back hard enough to rattle his glasses. "Come on, Bookworm, live a little!" He thought of the last time he’d seen him, at the party, his smile strained, complaining about the weird, overly sweet champagne before being led away by the impassive管家 for a "private tasting."
Zixuan’s hand, trembling, closed on the tarnished brass knob. It was unlocked.
The door opened inward without a sound.
The room was small, circular, and lit by a single, bright lantern hanging from the center of a domed ceiling. The air was sterile, sharp with the scents of antiseptic and new leather. In the middle of the room, on a low, backless divan, sat Zhao Mingyuan.
He was upright, posture perfect, facing the door. He was dressed in an exquisite, tight-fitting suit of deep brown leather, stitched with intricate, silver-threaded patterns. His face was calm, eyes open and clear. He looked more put-together than Zixuan had ever seen him.
"Mingyuan?" Zixuan whispered, hope a treacherous flame in his chest.
His friend’s lips moved. "Zixuan?" The voice was Mingyuan’s, but filtered, distant, like a recording played through a thin layer of water. "You made it. Crazy party, huh?"
The casual, almost glib tone was so utterly him that Zixuan took a step inside. "Are you… are you okay? We have to go."
"Go?" Mingyuan’s head tilted a fraction, a motion too precise. "I’m just… resting. Listen. I can finally hear it."
"Hear what?"
"The music." A beatific smile spread across Mingyuan’s face. Then he blinked, and for a second, the calm shattered. His eyes widened, filling with a lucid, abject terror. His voice dropped to a ragged, personal whisper. "Zixuan. Run. He’s not done. He tuned the bones first. Now he’s—"
The sentence cut off. The terror smoothed away, replaced once more by serene emptiness. "Would you like to hear?" Mingyuan asked pleasantly.
Before Zixuan could answer, Mingyuan’s leather-clad torso opened.
It wasn’t violent. It was a silent, graceful parting, the suit splitting down the center from the hollow of his throat to his waist. There was no blood. No viscera. Beneath was a hollow cavity, rib bones stripped clean and plated in silver, strung with a complex array of gleaming wires and taut, vibrating strings that glimmered with internal light. It was a harp. A horrific, organic harp built into the cavity of his best friend.
A faint, ethereal note hung in the air, emanating from the strings.
Zixuan vomited. He turned and retched, stomach heaving nothing but acid onto the stone floor. The sound of his gagging was drowned out as Mingyuan—or the thing that used to be Mingyuan—raised his hands. His fingers, tipped with small silver plectra, moved to hover over the internal strings.
"He said I had a good rhythm," the thing said with Mingyuan’s mouth, the voice now flat, devoid of all character. "A strong heart. Good for the bass notes."
The fingers plucked.
A deep, resonant chord filled the room. It was beautiful. It was the most obscene sound Zixuan had ever heard. The note vibrated in his teeth, in the silver lines on his arm, which suddenly burned with a cold fire. He clutched his arm, screaming through his nausea.
The music did something to the air. The shadows in the corner of the room coalesced, thickening into the form of the管家. He stood, silent and waiting, his empty eyes fixed on Zixuan.
The harp-plucking fingers moved again, cycling through a simple, haunting progression. With each chord, the tug in Zixuan’s arm became a yank. His feet slid an inch forward on the floor. The music was pulling him physically toward the open, singing cavity.
The integrated instrument.
He dug his heels in, throwing his weight backward. He fumbled for the doorframe, his sweaty fingers slipping on the stone. The管家 took a step forward, a smooth, mechanical motion.
With a last, desperate wrench, Zixuan tore himself from the room, stumbling back into the corridor. He slammed the door shut. The beautiful, horrific music muffled to a dull throb behind the wood.
But the silver on his arm was blazing now, a lighthouse beacon under his skin. And from down the corridor, from the deeper darkness where the gas lamps failed, he heard a new sound. Not music.
A voice. Choked, strained, but human.
"…someone? Is someone there? Please… it’s… it’s Lin Xiao. I can’t… I can’t get my fingers out of the clay."
The voice was raw with tears. It came from the same direction the silver was pulling him.
Zixuan looked at his glowing arm, then back at the door that hid what was left of Mingyuan. The cold in his veins was a command. The desperate voice was a plea.
He stumbled forward, following the twin compulsions of curse and conscience, deeper into the gullet of the house. The shadows of unfinished sculptures on the walls seemed to lean in, watching him pass, their forms shifting in the uncertain light to something eager, and hungry.