The days began to bleed into one another, marked not by sunrises but by the chime of bells and the shuffle of grey feet on ivory floors. Week one became week two. The sharp edges of my fear dulled into a constant, low-grade hum of unease—a background frequency matching the Tower’s own vibration.

  The routine was absolute:

  First Bell: Wake. The lights came on with a cold flicker, bleaching the dorms in antiseptic white. Dress in the drab grey tunic that felt less like clothing and more like a uniform for a particularly grim profession.

  Second Bell: Breakfast. Flavorless, efficient fuel served on steel trays that echoed when set down. I stopped tasting it altogether; only texture and temperature remained.

  Third Bell: Training on Floor Six. The corridors always smelled faintly of ozone and disinfectant. Sensing drills in the morning, absorption in the afternoon.

  Our group of five—Tavin, Seren, Caius, Gawain, and I—was always together. We were a unit, a cohort. Intake 2146-2150. A single entry on the Record of Service board, though I avoided looking at it now.

  The training escalated. Grade 1 Taint became Grade 1.5. The vessels grew larger, the smoke inside darker, more dense.

  Tavin tried to laugh it off at first, shaking out his hands between rounds. “Just nerves,” he muttered when they trembled too hard to hide. “Body gets used to it.” But his smile never reached his eyes.

  My performance was… notable.

  Where others struggled, I absorbed smoothly. Where Tavin gasped and shuddered, I remained steady. Where Caius fought against the flow with visible effort, I simply opened and let it in.

  Warden Thale’s notes grew longer. His looks grew more thoughtful. He no longer praised me in front of the others. Instead, he’d nod, a small, clinical gesture, and say, “Adequate, 2147.”

  But his eyes said something else. They measured. They calculated.

  They know, I thought sometimes, lying awake at night. They know it feels different for me.

  Day 12. Siphon Chamber Four.

  “Today, we move to Grade 2,” Thale announced, his voice echoing in the small, circular room. “The Taint at this concentration exhibits greater… persuasion. It will test your resolve. Remember Rule Two. What you hear is not truth. It is corrosion.”

  The vessel before us was twice the size of the previous ones. The Taint didn’t swirl—it churned. Dark violet, shot through with threads of black that seemed to absorb the light.

  Tavin went first.

  The moment his hand touched the glass, his entire body went rigid. A choked sound escaped his lips. The Taint didn’t flow—it rammed into him. He stumbled back, but Thale was there, a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.

  “Hold, 2146. You must hold.”

  Tavin’s eyes were wide, unseeing. Tears streamed down his face, mingling with sweat. His free hand clawed at the air. I could see the struggle in every tendon of his neck, in the violent tremor of his arms.

  It took twice as long as his previous attempts. When the vessel was finally empty, he collapsed, retching onto the pristine floor. Thale didn’t scold him. He just made a note.

  “The body rejects what the mind cannot master,” Thale said, not unkindly. “It will pass. Next.”

  Seren absorbed in her usual silence, but when she finished, she swayed on her feet, her complexion greyer than before. Caius bit through his lip, the copper tang of blood mixing with the ozone in the air. Gawain absorbed without reaction, but a thin trickle of blackened blood dripped from his nose afterward, which he wiped away with a blank expression.

  Then my turn.

  I placed my hand on the cold glass. The Grade 2 Taint lunged.

  The impact was physical—a punch to the chest that stole my breath. The warmth that followed was intense, almost overwhelming. It wasn’t just heat; it was a symphony of sensation. The colors behind my eyes were deeper, richer. The whispers were clearer.

  …Kieran…

  My name. Not a guess. A recognition.

  …the blood… the key… the door…

  I gasped, my eyes flying open.

  The vessel was empty. The absorption was complete. I’d taken the full dose in half the time it took Tavin.

  Thale was staring at me, his ledger forgotten in his hand.

  “What did you hear?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft.

  “Nothing clear, sir,” I said, the lie automatic now. “Pressure. Noise. Like before.”

  He held my gaze for a count of five. The hum of the chamber was the only sound.

  “Your saturation rate is exceptional,” he said finally, closing his ledger with a snap. “We will need to adjust your schedule. Dismissed.”

  That evening, in the Common Room, the dynamic had shifted.

  Tavin sat hunched on a bench, arms wrapped around himself. He’d stopped tapping. Now he just… shook. A fine, constant tremor that made his hands useless. He’d spilled his water twice at dinner.

  “It’s getting worse,” he murmured, not looking at me. “Every time, it’s heavier. Colder. Like it’s… settling. Putting down roots.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Mine feels like coming home would have been a cruelty.

  Caius was uncharacteristically quiet, staring at a crack in the ivory floor. The arrogance had been burned out of him, replaced by a sullen, simmering fear.

  Seren approached me as I was about to leave. She moved so quietly I didn’t hear her until she was beside me.

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  “You hear them too,” she stated. It wasn’t a question.

  I froze. “Rule Two, Seren.”

  “I don’t care about the rules,” she whispered, her dark eyes earnest. “I hear them. The voices in the Taint. They’re not hallucinations. They’re… memories. Pieces of people. They’re scared.”

  A chill that had nothing to do with the room crept down my spine. “Don’t say that. Not here.”

  “You know it’s true,” she insisted. “You feel it. You’re the only one who doesn’t look like you’re being poisoned.” She glanced at Tavin, who was staring at his trembling hands as if they belonged to someone else. “He’s being poisoned. It’s killing him.”

  Before I could respond, she melted back into the shadows near the wall.

  I stood there, my heart pounding. She was right. I knew she was right. The system was a filter, and Tavin was the residue being caught in the mesh. But what was the alternative? Let the Taint run wild? I’d seen the world outside Valdrence in books—twisted, broken, Unbound roaming ruins. This was the price of safety.

  Wasn’t it?

  Day 18. Private Evaluation. Floor Five: Medical & Evaluation.

  The summons came during free time. A different Warden—one I didn’t recognize—appeared at the door of the Common Room.

  “Intake 2147. Report to Evaluation Room Three. Immediately.”

  The other Hollows watched me go. Their expressions were a mixture of pity and relief—relief that they hadn’t been called.

  Evaluation Room Three was a small, white cube. In the center sat a chair that looked more like a restraint device. A Warden in white robes stood beside a trolley of gleaming, sinister instruments.

  “Sit.”

  I sat. The chair was cold through my thin tunic.

  The evaluation was invasive in a way that felt violating. They took blood from my arm—the vial darkened slightly as it filled, as if my blood was tinged with shadow. They placed cold metal discs on my temples and chest, which hummed and glowed with a pale blue light.

  “Saturation level: 18%,” the Warden recited to an assistant, who scribbled on a slate. “Integration rate: Exceptional. Psychic resonance: Elevated. Markers for… emotional concordance detected.”

  Emotional concordance. They had a word for it. For feeling what I felt.

  The Warden leaned over me, his eyes magnified by thick lenses. “During absorption, subject 2147, describe the phenomenological experience. Use your own words.”

  I kept my voice flat. “It is a weight. A pressure. I contain it.”

  “No warmth? No sense of… familiarity?”

  “No, sir.”

  He made a note. “Liar,” he said, almost conversationally. “Your biometrics spike with parasympathetic response during absorption. Your body registers it as pleasure. Your mind may lie to us, but your blood does not.”

  I said nothing.

  He leaned closer. “Your grandfather’s biometrics showed the same pattern. Right up until they didn’t. Right up until his readings went off the scale and he started screaming that the ‘prisoners’ needed to be freed.” He tapped his slate with a stylus. “We are watching you, 2147. One step off the path. One moment of doubt. And you will join him in the dark.”

  He straightened up. “Dismissed.”

  My grandfather wasn’t a story now. He was data. A warning label in their archives. As I left, shaking, I passed the open door of another evaluation room. Inside, I saw Tavin in the same chair, head lolling to the side, eyes vacant as a Warden shone a light into them. His lead disc, hanging outside his tunic, was glowing with a faint, sickly green light.

  That night, the whispers in my chest were louder.

  I lay in bed, the locket a cold weight against my skin. The warmth of the Taint within me was a constant presence now, a companion in the silence. I found myself… listening for it. The way you might listen for the breathing of someone sleeping in the next room.

  …not a jar…

  The thought came from nowhere, clear as my own.

  …a door…

  I sat up, my heart hammering. That wasn’t my thought. It was placed there. A concept inserted into my mind like a key into a lock.

  I looked at the knife from my father, which I kept hidden under my mattress. In the faint light from the window slit, the iridescent metal seemed to shimmer with its own inner light. I picked it up. The moment my skin touched the hilt, a shock ran up my arm—not painful, but clarifying. The whispers in my chest quieted, as if soothed.

  The knife wasn’t just metal. It was a tool. For what?

  A soft, rhythmic thumping came from the other side of my wall. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Tavin.

  I slid out of bed and crept into the corridor. His door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open.

  He was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, his forehead thumping gently against the ivory wall. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing the room.

  “They’re so loud,” he whispered, his voice raw. “They’re all talking at once. They’re so… sad. One of them keeps asking for her daughter. She says her name is Elara. She says she’s sorry she never came home.”

  I knelt beside him. “Tavin, that’s the Taint. It’s lying. It’s trying to confuse you.”

  He turned his head slowly. His pupils were dilated, almost swallowing the iris. “Is it? How do you know? How do any of us know?” He grabbed my arm, his grip fever-hot. “What if we’re not the good guys, Kieran? What if we’re the jailers?”

  Rule Two screamed in my head. No discussion of voices, memories, or recognition.

  But he was breaking. Right in front of me.

  “You need to tell Thale,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “He can help.”

  “Help?” Tavin let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “They’ll decommission me. That’s the help. ‘Fraying,’ remember?” He looked at his hands, which had stopped trembling and were now perfectly, eerily still. “I can feel it. The seal. It’s not just weeping. It’s cracking.”

  The lead disc on his chest pulsed with green light.

  I made a decision. A stupid, dangerous decision.

  “Give me your disc.”

  He stared at me. “What?”

  “For a minute. Just give it to me.”

  Bewildered, he lifted the chain over his head. I took the warm, glowing lead disc in one hand, and with the other, I pressed the blade of my father’s knife against it.

  Nothing happened for a second. Then, the green light flickered. It dimmed. The disc grew cooler. The strange iridescence of the knife blade swirled, as if drinking the light.

  Tavin’s breathing eased. The frantic panic in his eyes receded, replaced by exhaustion. “What… what did you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly, staring at the knife. When I pulled my hand away, my fingers tingled, numb and cold, as if the knife had taken something from me too. As if procedural memory, I somehow just “knew” that the knife could help. Why?

  He nodded, slumping against the wall. “The voices… they’re quieter. The pressure… it’s less.” He looked at the knife with awe and terror. “What is that?”

  “A family heirloom,” I whispered, slipping the knife back into its hiding place. I handed him back the disc. It was now a dull, cool grey. “Don’t tell anyone. Not ever.”

  “Who would I tell?” he said, his voice hollow. But he managed a weak, grateful smile. It was the first I’d seen in days.

  “This discs are also… oppressing. I doubt its only used to check our internal seals”. I took out my own disc. Cold, hard metal. Do abnormality.

  Tavin shook his head. He looked deprived of strength. Perhaps nothing mattered to him anymore.

  I returned to my cell, the weight of the secret heavier than any Taint. The knife could help. It could ease the burden. But for how long? And what was the cost?

  As I lay back down, a new bell chimed—a deep, resonant tone I hadn’t heard before. It echoed through the corridors, once, twice, three times.

  A moment later, a voice, amplified by some unseen mechanism, spoke into the silence of the dormitory level.

  “All senior Hollows, report to Floor Four for mission briefing. Field assignment in the Morvian Rot is now active. Intakes 2146 through 2150 are to report to the Preparation Bay at First Bell tomorrow for equipment fitting and preliminary briefing.”

  The voice cut off.

  Field assignment. The world outside.

  The thought should have filled me with dread. Instead, a treacherous, wild part of me felt a spike of excitement. Out there, away from the sterile ivory and watchful eyes, maybe I could find answers. Maybe I could learn what this knife was, what my grandfather knew, and why the Taint felt like a home I’d never known I’d lost.

  In the darkness, the Taint in my chest hummed in agreement.

  Finally, it seemed to whisper. We go to see the sky.