Order, Elian had always believed, was the truest architecture of happiness. A stable life, meticulously planned, found its bedrock in accord. Like attracted like. Values mirrored, lineage understood, intellect aligned, coffers balanced, even the subtle calculus of physical grace. Such symmetries, he was certain, formed the expressway to the contented existence everyone, silently or loudly, craved. He, a clever child, had mapped this truth early.
Then, in his seventeenth year, the carefully drawn lines of his world fractured. He found himself caught in the gravitational pull of something extraordinary, a force that defied all his neat calculations. Perhaps it had always been there, an invisible thread, only now tightening. He, a master of logic, a devotee of the verifiable, had initially dismissed it. A momentary aberration. A youthful fancy. He labelled it a transient 'crush' and filed it away, unexamined.
Yet, the feelings, denied and suppressed, did not vanish. They coiled inside him, a knot in his gut, a constant pressure at his throat. They choked him, a silent, persistent strangulation.
“Rhyse is expecting you at The Gilded Cage. Room 317. Urgent.”
Rain-slicked dawn light, the colour of bruised amethyst, seeped through his study window. The message, an unexpected blot upon his carefully scheduled morning, had landed like a stone in still water. His early morning peace, his solitary ritual of charting the day’s first currents, evaporated.
He sat on the edge of his bed, the chill of the morning seeping through his thin sleeping robes. A frustrated sigh escaped him. A muttered curse followed. The household hummed with the quiet rhythm of the sleeping staff, the distant clatter of a scullery maid already at her work, but no one else. His departure would go unnoticed. He decided to go.
Beyond the wrought-iron gate, a peculiar conveyance waited. A grav-cycle, sleek and dark as polished onyx, leaned against the weathered stone wall of the house across the narrow alley. It belonged to the new occupants, he surmised. A family had moved in nearly a cycle ago, filling the void left by the abrupt departure of the former residents. He had never encountered them. Not surprising in this quarter of Veridian, where towering walls and privacy wards ensured minimal interaction. Judging by the grav-cycle, he imagined an older son, perhaps, someone older than himself.
Sometimes, the machine was simply left, a forgotten thought, near the gate. Other times, it was crammed into a corner, chained down with heavy, arcane links. That dichotomy, that casual display of power juxtaposed with a desperate need for confinement, mirrored something within him. He stared for a beat too long before looking away, hailing a passing automaton-cab.
Through the cab’s grimy viewport, the city awakened in shades of grey and pewter. The endless rain of Veridian painted streaks on the glass, blurring the nascent light into impressionistic smudges. Glimpses of steam pluming from factory stacks, the silent, elegant passage of sky-barges, the intricate, gothic lacework of bridge supports — he tried to fix his gaze on them. But the swaying motion of the cab, the peculiar metallic tang of its internal mechanisms, quickly unsettled him. He was prone to motion sickness. He closed his eyes.
---
A persistent tightness had taken root in his chest about a year ago. It made digesting food a protracted, uncomfortable ordeal. He sighed, pressing a hand against his sternum, attempting to physically ease the emotional constriction. Unsettling emotions were best ignored, he had learned. They were variables, deviations from the grand design. With meticulous effort, he had perfected a composed façade, a placid surface that betrayed nothing of the churning depths beneath. It was the same mask he wore now, stepping out of the cab onto the polished plasteel plaza of The Gilded Cage hotel.
The hotel itself was a testament to Veridian’s opulent contradictions: gleaming chrome details against ancient stone, arcane lighting devices casting an eternal twilight, the distant, hushed thrum of an ætheric generator. Its grandeur felt suffocating.
Inside, his lips thinned. He clenched his right fist, the knuckles momentarily white, before slowly relaxing his grip. He focused on the small slip of paper in his palm, its crisp edge digging into his skin. The number, ‘317,’ was scrawled in an arrogant hand he knew too well. He approached the corresponding door, its dark wood inlaid with intricate brass filigree.
Three quiet knocks. A pause. The silence on the other side was absolute.
“Kaelen Rhyse,” Elian’s voice, a little rougher than he intended, cut through the plush quiet of the corridor. “Open the door.”
Still nothing. A muscle in Elian’s jaw twitched. His irritation, a hot spark, ignited. He pounded on the door, the sound sharp and jarring in the hushed hallway. “I said, open the damn door!”
The situation, honestly, was an affront to his sensibilities. Imagining the carelessly indulgent activities that likely had transpired within that room overnight made his skin crawl. A tremor ran through him, a mixture of revulsion and something else he refused to name. Yet, his hand kept knocking. Kaelen had demanded his presence. And he, Elian, endured this repulsive scene because Kaelen Rhyse was the source, the vector, of that initial, insidious 'illness' that had tainted his carefully constructed world.
“Why summon me, Kaelen,” he spat, his voice low and venomous, “when you’re occupied with some meaningless dalliance? You worthless scion.”
By the Stars, this was unbearable.
The life of an eighteen-year-old, he thought, pressing his forehead against the cold wood. It was a chaotic, devastating blueprint.