Aous: The White Ruby Cough

The golden dust scorched Silas’s lungs, each breath a needle-drag across the raw lining of his chest. He stood on the jagged precipice overlooking the Crystallization Square, watching the Great Beacons gorge themselves on the last embers of a crimson dusk. The horizon of Akkad was nothing but glowing ash. Below, the plaza stretched out like a communal grave, populated by the salt-statues of those who had come before him. They stood like blighted trees, bark-skinned and hollow, their arched backs supporting the crushing weight of the city’s ceiling. Silas raised a trembling hand to his throat. He traced the skin, recoiling at the alien texture blooming beneath his touch. It wasn't simple dryness; it was a cluster of hard, crystalline nodules sprouting from the inside out. Today was his nineteenth birthnight—the day the Great Barter claimed its dues, demanding a tithe of flesh or sense in exchange for the privilege of existing within the city’s stone womb. The workshop door screeched open on rusted hinges. Haya entered, her movements mechanical and devoid of human grace, as if her joints were governed by unseen clockwork. Haya had felt nothing—not the bite of winter nor the sear of…