The air clung thick to Silas’ skin, his eyes down, veiled by long, graying hairs, unkempt and disheveled. The gritting cold barely wormed its way in through the doors, far more insistent than the years before.

The winters grew more frigid. 

No other man sat in the tavern, only the brutish, foul-smelling wretch that stood behind the bar. The day was still young–far too early for anybody to be joining Silas.

Silas had never left. 

The bell jangled as the door creaked open, the wind howling briefly before it was shut again. Silas didn’t have to turn his head to know who it was.

There was only one individual who knew Silas would come here. 

Probably the only one who knew him at all.

Gronen.

The man stumbled in, his footsteps awkward on the old floorboards. With him, in his pockets, twin vials clinked, and Silas didn’t have to hear them to confirm so.

There had been endless mornings like this, dim days under pallid light that only ended one way. 

Ambrosia.

The purple fluorescent liquid was poison under the guise of temporary bliss.

“Gronen.”

Silas didn’t look up from his drink, his bones aching and weak. 

It’d been days since his last dose.

“You look terrible, Silas,” Gronen said, his breath heavy. He was in worse condition than Silas, his skin more yellowed and his face a sunken mass of flesh.

Yet his eyes oozed anticipation.

“You look like you could use another dose.”

“Aye.”

Gronen took out the twin vials, and Silas looked up at the dreaded fluid. He would skip his dose one of these days.

Beat the drug.

Not today.

“Barman,” Gronen said. “Pour us a pair of drinks, will you?”

The barman looked up with disdain, as if he disliked their very presence. 

Yet he did as he was asked, reaching for a dull bottle in the cupboard below and pouring out two glasses of brown ale.

Gronen coughed and wheezed, his flesh visibly retracting for a moment. Ambrosia borrowed vibrancy from the future, allowing its user to feel revitalised.

If only briefly.

“Cheers,” they said simultaneously, not wasting another moment before clinking their mugs together and chugging down the ale.

It burned as it went down, though it was sweetened by the sickly flavour of Ambrosia.

Gronen’s skin filled out, regaining its reddish colour. His emaciated frame fattened, more flesh forming on his bones.

Silas was sure it was happening to him as well, though he couldn’t think much past the overwhelming sense of ecstasy and youth that was taking him over.

His breathing became less heavy, his hair retracting slightly. Ambrosia was now practically a necessity for Gronen and him. 

A few days without, and they would simply crumble to dust. 

For now, Silas looked to be in his mid-forties again. He looked his age again.

The thing about Ambrosia–the one thing that truly made it such a horrid substance–was that one could never truly know when time was going to catch up to them. 

They called them Finalities.

When Ambrosia finally claimed the old soul of its consumer, when then borrowed time from the future would finally reach past the present. 

Then a person had reached their Finality. 

Silas would reach it one of these days.

Yet death no longer scared him. 

It had frightened him once. Before he’d been broken.

Before his family had been torn away from him.

Confluence was an unforgiving city.

Full of dim souls and bloody grudges.

Silas let his head dip behind his chair, closing his eyes and feeling the exhilaration of Ambrosia flowing through his veins. Through the haze of addiction and grief, he looked at Gronen, who was in a similar position.

The bliss did not last long.

Gronen began wheezing uncontrollably, the effects of Ambrosia slowly reversing.

“What’s happening?” he asked, and Silas tried to regain a small modicum of consciousness to help his friend.

Tears began flowing down Gronen’s face.

Silas simply couldn’t lose him as well.

“Take this outside,” the bartender said, as if this was a daily occurrence. 

It most likely was.

Gronen’s breathing became harsh, his mouth wide open as the thought of dying settled in.

“I can’t die, Silas,” he said, and Silas checked his pulse. Silas also began breathing heavily, fear gripping his heart as he lifted his sole friend from his chair.

Finalities were visceral.

Horrible to watch.

“You’re not going to die, Gronen,” Silas said, trying to reassure himself and Gronen at the same time. He couldn’t think much past the mist of pleasure, but he retained enough sense to take him outside.

Stolen story; please report.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder, the gnawing cold eating hungrily at his skin. 

“Please, Silas. I don’t want to die,” Gronen wept, his face covered in wet tears. Blood now leaked from his eyes, ears, and nostrils, the strain of time grabbing ahold of him.

“Shh, Gronen,” Silas said. “Death won’t claim you now.”

I can’t allow it.

A single tear dropped from Silas’ eye, and his heart was filled with the grief he’d felt so long ago.

“You mean it?” Gronen asked, smiling with bloodied teeth. The lines on his face deepened, not with sorrow, but with happiness. 

With joy.

“Yes,” Silas said quietly. “I mean it.”

Gronen closed his eyes then, the veins on his arms and face a deep purple. 

No. This can’t be happening. Not now.

Silas’ eyes widened, his hands bloody as time bent. 

The air rippled at his will, a strange pulling sensation filling his body. Reality seemed to crack, tugging and uncoiling something that burned through his own veins like molten rock.

The foreign power was frightening.

He didn’t know how, nor why it did, but it did. 

The purplish veins on Gronen retracted, red returning to his cheeks for a moment. Blood peeled off his skin, fading into the air. 

Yet it wasn’t enough.

Whatever arcane magic had taken heed of his pleas wasn’t powerful enough.

Gronen’s harsh breathing stopped.

The blood pooled once more. 

Time unfolded.

And Silas simply stood there, his only friend cradled in his arms. 

Dead.

He looked up at the dying sun, its embers stubbornly clinging to the skies in an effort to survive. 

Confluence was doomed. 

As was Silas.

The thrill of Ambrosia wasn’t enough to overcome the grief. 

Not this time.

Silas couldn’t leave Gronen’s body on the ground here for stray dogs to rip through. He heaved the man up, his weight barely noticeable as he slung him over his back. 

A small paper, no larger than Silas’ hand, fell out of the man’s front pocket.

Silas’ eyes were far too blurred to read what was on it, but he put it in his pocket.

The haze enveloped him.

***

Silas awoke on the ground of an alley. 

Gronen was nowhere near him, probably dumped in the beer quarter the morning before. The air was even colder now, the sun dipping below the snow-tipped mountains in the distance. 

Silas stood up, rubbing his eyes groggily and looking around, the events of the morning just catching up to him.

Gronen was dead.

The fact still made Silas shudder.

His only friend, the only man who’d bothered to speak to him–dead.

His blood is on my hands.

Silas had introduced him to Ambrosia four years ago. 

You didn’t know it would lead to this, a voice in Silas’ head said. Though it provided him with no consolation, it held a seedling of truth.

The Five–or the Four, as it had been back then–had claimed it was a drug with no side effects.

Silas cursed them again. 

Looking down at his hands, which were now skinnier than mere hours ago, he found dried blood on his flesh.

Silas exhaled painfully, his lungs burning. The air felt cold in his body.

On his skin.

Silas stood up cautiously, his bones feeling numb and his skin worn. Two other men, each fast asleep and likely under the influence of Ambrosia, lay beside him.

He gritted his teeth and winced, stepping onto the stairs beside him. His heart filled with grim determination.

Each step felt harsh, each stair harder than the last.

Sweat beaded his brow despite the cold.

He reached the top of the staircase–the roof–after a few minutes of climbing.

By the time he was up, he was wheezing and panting for his life. He always carried a little vial of Ambrosia in his pocket for emergencies, but he wouldn’t need it now.

He would beat it.

If it was the last thing he did.

The air was crisper at the top. Less sticky than the ground. He could see through the wall of mist from here, two or three stories up. Skyscrapers belonging to the Five dominated the skies, their highest floors piercing through the thick veil of fog.

A Binder building, with a rusted puppet symbol as its face, stood proudly. He’d been a Binder once. 

Following and worshipping his patron of the Five like a god. 

But where had Okhtar Bremidian been when Lara had bled out?

When his wife had been slaughtered.

Silas cursed the Families.

He cursed every last one of them.

For creating Ambrosia.

For ripping his family from him. 

Silas stepped up onto the ledge, feeling the wind on his cheeks and dangling a foot loosely into the air.

Despite hating it, Confluence was undoubtedly beautiful.

In its own, gloomy way.

The lights penetrated the fog in a myriad of colours, a psychedelic sight that graced Silas’ eyes.

Confluence earned its name.

If I have to die, I’ll do it basked in a sky of colours.

He looked down, the ground obscured by the mist from all the way up here. The fall would kill him, that was sure.

Silas started feeling light-headed.

He would not be remembered.

Just like Gronen.

Gronen.

There had been a thin sheet of parchment on his person as he’d died. 

Silas reached gingerly into his pocket, beneath the tattered fur coat, and unfolded the yellowed paper. 

He doubted there would be much written on it, but the least he could do was tie up his friend’s loose ends.

Gronen’s Finality had settled a dark truth on his skin. 

Silas’ own was coming soon.

Inevitably.

On the sheet, scribbled in mad handwriting, barely decipherable, were a number and a name. 

Lrayir.

Silas was sure he’d never heard of the name, at least not consciously, and the way it was scratched on the paper made him think it meant nothing. 

Yet he read on.

56.

The number held no significance to Silas.

A street number?

Gronen’s address?

In his final weeks, Gronen had become less present at the tavern. 

As if he was occupied elsewhere.

Silas debated jumping once more.

It would end the horror.

Images of Rachael ran through his mind. He hadn’t thought of her in months–long enough to form scabs over the mental wounds. 

He tore them open.

The last months before her death, months of working harder to provide for the third member of the family that was to come. 

Only to be left alone.

He remembered how she’d smiled before perishing. How she’d made him promise he’d take care of the unborn.

He’d vowed.

The child had died minutes after Rachael.

Silas steeled himself. 

Gronen had been onto something. 

I have to find this Lrayir.

Silas twisted the number ‘56’ in his head. Almost everything in Confluence was numbered. The first number usually indicated the Family they belonged to.

Five families. 

Five first numbers.

The fifth was the New World. 

What was Gronen doing with the New World?

The New World was the neonate Family in Confluence. Born out of growing admiration for its leader, the others had been forced to give them a seat at the table.

Warmongers, they called them. 

If Silas had to bind himself to another Family, the New World was first on his list.

Silas gritted his teeth.

His bones ached, and his eyes felt sore, but the arcane energy he’d just tapped into had relieved him.

Perhaps it’s the cure.

Silas stepped off the ledge.

I have something to live for.

He took one last look down into the light-filled city. 

Confluence was in peril.

By the time Silas made it to the stairs, he’d already tipped another vial of Ambrosia down his gullet.