The walls of Eelgrave Orphanage wept. Not metaphorically—wept—in thick brown rivulets that leaked from the upper beams, carving streaks through mildew and brick rot. Every surface was damp. Every breath tasted of vinegar and sweat. Even the rats had learned to scavenge in silence.
Only one boy stood in the main hall.
Ivar.
Barefoot, pale, spine straight like a nailed plank. He looked neither cold nor warm, hungry nor full. He didn't fidget. Didn't blink more than he had to. Where other boys paced or whimpered or chewed their fingers raw, Ivar simply stood.Too still for thirteen.Too still for here.
Footsteps broke the stillness—one foot dragging slightly behind the other. The sharp thock of cane on stone announced her before the smell did. Matron Murren emerged from a pocket of boiled cabbage air, hunched like a dying vulture. Her apron, stiff with old milk and blood, was speckled with coarse salt. One eye was milk-glassed, the other always wet.
She stopped a few feet from him and curled her lip like she'd tasted something sour.
"Still here, then."
Her voice scraped like a knife pulled slow over bone.
"Watched every cull. Every beastburst. Watched 'em take Nallo screamin'. Watched Wex bleed black from the mouth. Didn't make a sound."
Ivar said nothing.
Her cane tapped forward.
"Not a whimper when they tore the twins apart. One caught fire, the other caught madness. You just stood there like furniture."
He tilted his head. "There was nothing I could do."
Murren gave a bitter chuckle that came out like a cough. She leaned in, breath thick with cloves and something rotten underneath.
"Boys who scream—we know what they are. They've got shape. Got cracks. Scream shows where to look. But you—boys like you rot different. You ferment. Fill up on the silence 'til you burst."
Her fingers hovered near his cheek. Didn't touch. Just trembled.
"And when you do… it'll be all teeth, won't it? No warning."
She reached into her apron, pulled out a rust-scaled key, and let it fall. It landed with a dull clink. Rolled once. Stopped at his toes.
"Door's open now. Walk through it. Or stay 'til the Blackarms cut you open like a locked box. Your choice."
He stared at the key for a moment. Then:"What if I don't choose?"
Murren laughed—thin, reedy, and unfinished. It rattled in her chest.
"Then you die here. But not clean. Not like a boy. You'll go off wrong, and I'll be left scrubbin' what's left out the wall cracks."
Ivar bent. Picked up the key. Didn't use it. The door stood half-open already. A cold, wet wind pressed through the gap, like the last breath of someone drowning.
He paused at the threshold.
"I'm not angry."
Her hand twitched around her cane. "That's what terrifies me," she whispered, pressing one palm to her chest, wheezing. As if the air itself had thickened in his presence.
The door moaned open, and Ivar stepped out.
The fog swallowed him whole.
Eelgrave didn't sleep.It marinated. In steam. In rot. In old things that had learned not to speak.
The streets bled heat through cracked grates. Smoke curled from chimneys that hadn't seen fire in weeks. Rain hung in the air like phlegm, too lazy to fall. Pipes crawled up walls like rusted vines, and the alleys tangled like veins through meat left too long in the sun.
Ivar walked. Not fleeing. Not seeking. Just moving.With the kind of stillness that drew notice.
From a collapsed cart, a man watched him pass. Yellowed eyes, mouth of loose teeth.
"No cuffs," the man muttered. "No collar. Skin too clean. Don't twitch. Don't talk. Don't cry…"
Ivar passed within reach.
The man flinched, as if something had split open beneath his ribs.
"Still ones," he spat. "Quiet little jars. Filled with teeth."
Around the corner, a butcher sat on a bucket gnawing cold fat off a bone. His stall was long since emptied of anything worth selling.
He didn't look up until Ivar was nearly past. Then—"Oi."
No pause.
"Boy."
Ivar kept walking.
The butcher lurched up, grabbed his collar. Spun him half-around.
Their eyes met.
The butcher's grip faltered.
Whatever he saw—panic, defiance, rage—none of it came.
Only calm. Hollow calm. Too clean.Like a grave that had never been filled.
The butcher's hand dropped away. He stepped back, working his jaw.
"Your eyes," he whispered. "They don't blink right."
He spat on the ground. "You one o' them salt-licked freaks, ain't ya? Eyes like a graveyard. Like they forgot how to close."
He turned, wiping his palms on his apron.
"Keep walkin'. Ain't got no salt to spare."
Behind a cracked shutter above, two sisters whispered to each other.
"Dead eyes," one said.
"Too pale," said the other. "Too dry. That's the kind the city likes. Lets 'em ripen slow."
From beneath a sewer grate, a child's voice rose:
"Which way'd it go?"
A pause.
"To where the silence nests," came a reply that scratched like claws against stone.
On the roof, a bootmender stitched with red-stained thread. He didn't look up.
"Still ones are worse," he muttered. "They don't even know when it starts."
Ivar passed under a rusted archway. A crooked sign swayed in the mist.
DEADCOIL CROSSINGNo Gods This Way
A man sat slumped on a barrel beside a sputtering steam vent, his fingers knitting invisible thread.
He stared as Ivar neared.
"Too clean," he said. "Your soles got no city on 'em.""Aye. But not from somethin'. That's what's wrong."
The man grinned—more gums than teeth.
"Where's your scream, boy? No one walks here without a wound."
Ivar said nothing. Just glanced at the man's feet—bare, scabbed, pressed into slick stone—then back to his eyes.
The man looked away first.
"…Tch. Thought so." He waved him off. "This vent's for the broken. Keep movin'."
He did.
At the edge of the Orphan Quarter, past where the shanty roofs gave way to broken fences and waterlogged trenches, stood the Gate of the Culled.
Beyond it: the pit.
Bodies wrapped in threadbare cloth, heaped like spoiled offerings. Some shrouds stirred in the wind.Some didn't, weighted down with mud and something more.
A crude board nailed above the gate read:
WE DON'T BURY WHAT TWITCHES
Ivar stared at it.Not praying.Not mourning.Just… registering.
He turned. Walked on.
A patch of moonlight slipped between the soot-choked clouds and landed, briefly, on his shoulder.
He didn't react. Just noted it. A ledger entry.
Rare.Faint.Gone.
Somewhere in the city's bones, a voice rasped:
"He didn't scream when they cut the others."
Another—farther off, higher-pitched:
"He won't scream when it's his turn."
From a pipe behind him, or a vent above—too far to see—a child's song whispered:
No teeth, no tail, no fire breath…But still he brings the quiet death…
He didn't rage.He didn't run.
He just walked.
And the city—ancient, broken, lined with rust and whispers—held its breath…
…and followed.