Chapter 19: Scene 1
The voice pulled him like a fishhook in his gut. Lin Xiao. The art student with the sharp, observant eyes. They’d shared a single rushed whisper in the main hall hours ago, a mutual acknowledgment that something was off about the champagne, the servants, the way the host’s smile never touched the air around it.
“Hold on!” Zixuan called out, his voice cracking. He staggered forward, the silver traceries in his arm pulsing in time with his heartbeat. They were a compass needle, and they pointed straight toward the source of the pleas.
The serpentine corridor ended at a pair of towering, ornate doors, gilt peeling from their carved surfaces. They were slightly ajar. Through the gap, a different quality of light spilled out—warm, honeyed, buzzing with the murmur of a crowd and the faint, discordant strains of a string quartet.
It was the Grand Ballroom. The heart of the evening’s false promise.
He edged to the door and peered inside.
The scale of it hit him first, a vast lung of a room. Crystal chandeliers the size of cars hung from a ceiling lost in frescoed gloom, their thousand candles shimmering across endless walls of mirror. The mirrors should have reflected the room. They didn’t. They reflected a different party.
In the room itself, the scene was a macabre parody of elegance. Dozens of young men, all around his age, all students from the invitation list, moved in a slow, formal waltz. They wore exquisite, antiquated suits, their hair perfectly styled, their faces powdered pale. But their movements were stiff, synchronized to the point of unreality. Their eyes were glassy, fixed on nothing, their smiles painted on and immobile.
The air was thick with the cloying scent of roses and melted wax, undercut by a sharper, coppery tang.
And in the mirrors, Zixuan saw the truth. The reflections showed the same figures, but transformed. One dancer’s reflection had a violinist’s scroll for a neck, strings stretching from his jaw to his collarbone. Another’s mirror-image was part of a human candelabra, wax dripping from stiff, outstretched fingers onto his own shoulders. He saw Mingyuan’s reflection, standing perfectly still by a mirrored pillar, the front of his leather suit seamless and whole.
This was the gallery. The showcase.
“Zixuan… here…”
The real voice, weak and human, came from his left, just inside the door. Behind a massive potted fern, its leaves browned and waxy, a figure was hunched against the wall.
Lin Xiao was barely recognizable. He was still in his own clothes—a stylish black sweater and jeans—but they were stained with clay and something dark. His hands were the worst part. They were encased in a lump of wet, greyish clay that had somehow fused with the wall itself, as if the ornate plaster had melted and swallowed his fingers to the knuckles. He was straining, tendons in his neck standing out, but his hands were utterly, seamlessly anchored.
“It… it grew over me,” Lin Xiao gasped, his face slick with sweat and tears. “I touched the wall to steady myself, and it just… moved. It feels like it’s drinking.”
Zixuan dropped to his knees beside him. He grabbed Lin Xiao’s forearm and pulled. It was like trying to pull a tree from concrete. The clay was cool, unnaturally alive, and pulsed faintly. The silver on Zixuan’s arm flared, and where his glowing skin neared the clay, it sizzled softly, and the clay recoiled an inch.
Lin Xiao’s eyes widened. “What the hell is on your arm?”
“I don’t know. A receipt.” Zixuan positioned his marked forearm close to the clay trapping Lin Xiao’s left hand. The clay writhed, pulling back like a living thing exposed to light. With a sick, sucking sound, it released the hand, leaving the skin raw and red. “Okay. Okay, that works.”
He repeated the process with the other hand. As the last of the clay receded into the wall, leaving only a damp, hand-shaped stain, Lin Xiao crumpled forward, free. He cradled his injured hands, breathing in ragged sobs.
“We have to get out of this room,” Zixuan whispered, scanning the waltzing figures. None had turned to look at them. Their dance continued, a silent, spinning nightmare.
“The doors on the far side,” Lin Xiao hissed, nodding across the vast floor. “The ones we came in through. They’re locked from the outside. The windows are… treated. The glass is thick as a bank vault.”
A new sound cut through the sluggish music. A slow, solitary clap.
The dancing stopped. Every head in the room turned in unison, with the smooth, precise motion of clockwork figures. Their blank eyes fixed on Zixuan and Lin Xiao.
From between the frozen dancers, the庄园主人 emerged. He moved with that liquid, unnerving grace, his black礼服 impeccable, the silver threads in it catching the candlelight. His porcelain mask gleamed, reflecting no emotion, but the slim, pale smile below it was both indulgent and terribly cold.
“Chen Zixuan,” the host said, his voice that low, melodic instrument that had once inspired awe and now only sparked a primal chill. “You are proving to be a most stimulating guest. The silver accepts you. It converses with you. This is rare.”
He took a step closer. The waltzing crowd parted for him without a sound.
“Let us go,” Zixuan said, the demand sounding pitifully small in the enormous room.
“Go? But you have only just arrived at the exhibition.” The host spread his hands, encompassing the room and its silent occupants. “This is the culmination. The transformation of base, chaotic life into perfect, enduring art. Your friend Zhao Mingyuan… his rhythm was always so robust, so physical. Now it is eternal. A living symphony.”
“He’s not living. You hollowed him out,” Zixuan spat, anger cutting through his fear.
The host tilted his head. “I elevated him. I removed the fragile, complaining meat. The doubt. The fear. The mundane needs. What remains is pure essence. His talent for joy, now a perpetual chord.” He took another step. The管家 materialized from the shadows near the door they’d entered, blocking any retreat. “And you, Lin Xiao. Your sensitivity, your perception of texture and form… it was screaming to be made permanent. The clay knows you. It wishes to hold you.”
Lin Xiao shrank back.
The host’s masked gaze shifted back to Zixuan’s arm. “But you… you are different. The silver does not just mark you. It resonates. You are not fighting the design. You are interpreting it.” He sounded fascinated. “There is a place for you. Not as a mere piece. But as a collaborator. A bridge between my vision and the… reluctant material.”
The offer hung in the perfumed air, more terrifying than any immediate threat. It was an invitation into the madness, a promise of power within the nightmare.
“Never,” Zixuan breathed.
The host sighed, a sound of genuine, mild disappointment. “A shame. Then you will be material after all. The silver in your veins will make the process exquisitely precise. You will be a masterpiece of reticence and insight. A living library of quiet terror.”
He gave a slight nod to the管家.
All at once, the frozen waltzers moved. Not with dance steps, but with a single, jerking, predatory intent. Their genteel poses dropped, and they began to shuffle forward, their collective movement a rustling, relentless tide. Their painted smiles didn’t change.
“The back service door,” Lin Xiao whispered urgently, pulling at Zixuan’s sleeve. “Near the orchestra dais. I saw a仆人 come from there earlier. It might not be locked.”
They ran. Their shoes slapped against the polished parquet, the sound obscenely loud. The host did not pursue. He simply watched, his hands clasped behind his back, as his collection closed in.
The things that looked like his fellow students moved with a slow, inevitable speed. They didn’t run. They just converged, cutting off angles, herding them toward the far end of the ballroom where a small, plain door was set into the paneling.
Zixuan’s silver arm was a beacon of cold fire now, the light bleeding through his shirt sleeve. As they passed a mirrored wall, his reflection showed not just the silver lines, but faint, ghostly blueprints of machinery superimposed over his skin, schematics of gears and pulleys where his bones should be.
The door was just ahead. It had a simple brass knob.
A hand grabbed Zixuan’s shoulder from behind. The grip was iron-strong, cold. He turned and saw a face he half-recognized from a literature seminar—empty eyes, a smile sewn into place with tiny, almost invisible silver stitches.
Without thinking, Zixuan shoved his glowing forearm into the thing’s chest.
There was a sound like sizzling fat. The silver lines blazed. The thing that wore a literature student’s face recoiled, a blackened, smoldering mark on its waistcoat. It did not scream. It just looked down at the wound, then back up, its smile intact.
But it had let go.
Lin Xiao wrenched the service door open. A blast of cold, dank air rushed out. They tumbled through into a narrow, dark stairwell leading down into pure blackness.
Lin Xiao slammed the door shut. There was no lock.
“Down,” Zixuan said, the word hollow in the sudden dark. “It’s the only way.”
Above them, on the other side of the door, they heard the soft, synchronized shuffle of many feet come to a stop. Then, the smooth, unmistakable turn of a single, well-oiled doorknob.