Silent Requiem

J sat on the edge of his bed, the dim candlelight flickering against the damp walls of his rented room. The envelope lay in his lap, its surface worn and slightly creased, as if it had been passed through too many hands before reaching his own. The Keeper had given it to him with that same knowing look, the one that said this will cost you more than you think.

He ran his thumb under the seal, tearing it open with a slow, deliberate motion. The scent of ink and paper filled the air as he unfolded the documents inside. Neat, precise handwriting filled the pages, accompanied by a few grainy photographs. The first was of a man—Elijah Dre.

Elijah Dre. Businessman. A pillar of high society. Importer of fine wines, known for his exclusive deals with the Trust Club's elite. But beneath the surface, he was something else entirely. A trafficker of ruin. His influence bled into the city's opium trade, his name whispered in back alleys and slurred between addicts' lips. He never dirtied his hands—never needed to. His operation ran too clean, too deep.

J's fingers ghosted over the second photograph. A woman this time. Younger. Her eyes carried the same sharpness, the same cold calculation. Elisa Dre. No—Elisa Denaire. She had abandoned her father's name, taking her mother's instead. A rejection? A cover? Hard to say. But her existence was the easiest thread to pull. She walked in places Elijah wouldn't. She made herself seen, unlike the man who hid behind silk curtains and bribed officials.

J leaned back, staring at the ceiling, tapping the edge of the envelope against his palm.

Elijah Dre was untouchable—for now. But his daughter? She was a door left open.

And J was about to walk through.

J plucked another photograph from the pile, the candlelight casting long shadows over the image. The man in the picture was a mountain wrapped in a suit—thick-necked, broad-shouldered, the kind of bulk that wasn't just for show. A beast in human skin. His face was square, brutish, marked by old scars that told stories no one lived long enough to hear. The name printed beneath the image was just as heavy.

Orville "Ox" Mercer.

Fitting. He looked like a man who could crush windpipes with his bare hands and not think twice about it. Mercer wasn't just Elijah Dre's associate—he was the wall between Dre and the filth of his own empire. A butcher who carved up problems before they could stain the fine linen of his employer's world.

J flipped to the next photograph, and this time, his brow arched.

A girl.

Young. Pale. Eerie. She sat in the image like she didn't quite belong to the same reality as the rest of them. Her hair was sleek, raven-dark, cascading over her shoulders like ink spilled on fine parchment. Her eyes, sharp and glassy, carried the weight of someone who had seen too much and decided to make a joke of it. There was something theatrical in her expression, as if she were constantly performing for an audience only she could see.

The name under the picture read:

Marion Faulner.

J exhaled through his nose, tapping the edge of the paper.

Elijah Dre. Ox Mercer. Elisa Denaire. Marion Faulkner.

This was starting to look more like a cast list for a theatre than an opium investigation.

But this wasn't ideal. He had to think. Fast. The Arbiter was one man who couldn't be fathomed easily. The five of them may have formed an alliance in secret, but Vermis wasn't just them five. Multiple hive networks, chains with no direct links and could be cut upon moment's notice if caught in enemy territory. That was the game they were playing, a risk worth sacrificing their lives for. 

He couldn't play by the rules, he never did. Picking up his pen, he twirled it around in his hand. Unbothered by the screams and sounds of gunshots outside. The one way to disrupt a trade, what was he tasked with, rather, what do they want him to do? To get to Elijah would pose no problem, but different methods led to different outcomes. To kill him? Bait. Draw him out? Con, steal. For information? Take his right hand.

But what was predicted and what was not? There was no way to know. And he couldn't risk blindly executing the mission without enough details. He looked around the room, with no purpose whatsoever. 

His eyes ended up on a simple page. He remembered something else the Keeper told him. About something important the informant gave.

J flicked open the paper, his eyes skimming over the neatly printed words.

Candidate J—Notice of Immediate Assignment

Due to absence from the mandatory post-class set and lack of prior group allocation, you have been formally assigned to R07 under direct approval from the Headmaster. Noncompliance will result in disciplinary action.

J exhaled through his nose, his fingers tightening slightly on the edges of the page. Ah. So that's what they were playing at. He'd missed one measly exercise—wasn't his fault he had better things to do than prance around in whatever mind-numbing drill they had planned—and now they were dropping him into a group without his say in it.

R07. Not just any group, either. The number alone told him that much. Low digits meant high stakes from the information he had gathered before coming here. This wasn't some collection of barely-passing students scraping by. No, this was one of them.

He nearly laughed.

There was still something that bothered him, and he was helpless to think about.

How is Smith linked to all of this? He thought. His mind raced back to the man named Graves.

J stared at the ceiling, arms spread like a corpse at sea, the dim glow of the lamp burning between the walls. Sleep wasn't something he did—it was something that happened to him, like a mugging in a dark alley. Unpredictable. Violent. Gone before he could grasp it.

Some nights, it was a few stolen hours. Other nights, it was a staring contest with the void until the sun dragged itself up like a beaten drunk. His body had long since given up sending signals—exhaustion, hunger, pain, all just background noise in the static of existence.

"What about my wrecked sleeping schedule?" He muttered to himself. "I hope I wake up in the same decade."

***

The twilight stretched endlessly, a golden hush settling over the field of wild weeds. The world smelled of earth and distant rain, the sky vast and bruised with streaks of violet and gold. J lay with his back against the rough bark of an ancient tree, its roots twisting deep into the soil like veins of something old, something watching. At its center, carved into the wood, was an enigmatic symbol, one that seemed to pulse if stared at too long.

J lay beside his mother, his head pillowed by the tangled grass, watching the world breathe around them. His mother sat upright, her back against the gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, her fingers moving absently through his younger brother's hair. The boy lay curled in her lap, small hands clutched at the fabric of her dress, his breaths slow and deep, lost in sleep.

She was humming.

A sound soft and warm, delicate like spun glass. It wove into the evening air, filling the spaces between the rustling grass and the quiet sighs of the earth. The melody was old, older than memory—something passed down through generations, yet it belonged to her in a way nothing else did.

J let his eyes fall shut, not asleep, but pretending to be. There was comfort in it, in the way the world faded when he was still. The way her voice wrapped around him, gentle yet firm, like the press of her palm against his back when he was younger, when she wanted him to know she was there.

He listened.

The song had no words, but it spoke. It spoke of warmth, of love that did not waver. Of nights spent by the fire, of arms that held tight, of promises made without ever needing to be said.

His mother shifted, her free hand brushing against his forehead for just a moment—a fleeting touch, but one that lingered.

"My little shadow," she murmured, almost to herself.

He didn't move, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

His mother always called him that.

His brother was the light—vibrant, full of laughter, bright even when the world was cruel. But J… J was different. He followed in the silence, lurked in the spaces between moments. He was the quiet between heartbeats, the pause between words.

But she had never said it with sorrow. Never with regret.

Only with love.

J stayed there, letting the hum of her song wash over him, letting himself believe, just for a little while longer, that this moment could last forever.

That the world wouldn't take it from him.

That the lullaby wouldn't fade.

But even as he pretended to sleep, even at the time, some part of him knew—

Nothing ever lasted.

Then, the world shifted.

The sky dimmed, deepening into something unnatural. The hush broke. The lullaby twisted, stretched, mangled—until it was no longer a lullaby at all. It was screaming. Raw, wet, endless.

J's breath hitched. His eyes open.

The twilight field was no longer golden but bathed in sickly red. The air was thick, choking. The ancient tree loomed above him, its roots no longer just roots but veins, pulsing, alive. And hanging from its branches—

Heads. 

Their faces twisted in agony, their eyes hollow, their mouths frozen mid-scream. The lullaby was still there, but underneath it, the wails of the damned clawed at his ears, overlapping, distorting, becoming something unbearable.

J's body was no longer small, no longer a boy's. His hands were steady. Cold. And in them—

A gun.

He was standing in a shadowed corner now, far from the field, inside a remote ginnel, far from the tree, the silence pressing in, suffocating. The air reeked of gunpowder, of something old and rotting. Before him, an old man knelt, eyes empty, lips trembling but silent. He was waiting. Accepting.

J lifted the gun, pointed it with mechanical ease. He felt nothing. No hesitation. No fear.

The trigger clicked—

He woke up. His eyes forced open. 

The room was dark, the sheets tangled around his legs, his breath steady but shallow. His fingers twitched, phantom weight still lingering where the gun had been.

J lay still, staring at the ceiling.

It was just a dream.

He took with a sharp inhale, his body rigid, his mind caught between the echo of a lullaby and the ghost of a gunshot. The room was dark, thick with silence, but the afterimage of the dream clung to his skin like sweat. His breaths came slow, deliberate—controlled, because panic was a useless thing, and he had no patience for useless things.

He pushed himself upright, elbows digging into the mattress, fingers running through his damp hair. The hum of his mother's voice still curled in the back of his mind, fading, slipping through his grasp like sand. But the screams—those always lingered. Always waited.

His hands curled into fists.

He didn't need to look at them to know they weren't clean.

J exhaled, long and measured, dragging himself back to reality, to the dim glow of the city bleeding through the cracks in the curtains. To the scent of dust and ink. To the cold air pressing against his skin, reminding him that this—this now—was real.

Not twilight fields. Not lullabies.

His jaw tensed.

That place didn't exist anymore. Hadn't for a long time.

With a sharp movement, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled against his lips. His mind ran over the dream again, dissecting it, peeling it apart like old paint. His mother. His brother. The tree. The hum of her song—then the bodies. The blood. The trigger beneath his finger, a weightless thing, pulled without hesitation.

His stomach twisted, but not in grief.

No, grief had burned out a long time ago.

This was something else.

Something colder.

He exhaled through his nose, a dry, humorless sound barely passing as a chuckle.

"Fuckin' poetic," he muttered, rubbing at his face.

Then, just like that, he shut the dream away, shoving it into the back of his mind where all the other ghosts lived. He stood, stretching his arms over his head until his shoulders popped.

There was work to do.

And nightmares didn't mean a damn thing when you were already awake in one.