"Not yet."
The words did not echo through air.
They echoed through existence itself.
A newborn's cry split the silence.
Silas screamed.
The sound was sharp, desperate, alive.
The maids froze around the cradle as if the cry itself had struck them. One stumbled back. Another crossed herself instinctively.
"He...he's loud," one of them whispered.
A male servant hurried forward and lifted the child carefully from the cradle.
"Madam… he lives fiercely," he said, forcing a smile as he rushed the baby across the room.
The woman on the bed reached out with trembling hands.
Blonde hair clung to her tear soaked face. Her skin was pale from labor, but her eyes those soft, foreign eyes shone with relief as she gathered the child into her arms.
The baby was born with nothing remarkable in his appearance.
Black hair.
Black eyes.
Common features.
A forgettable face.
And yet inside him, something ancient stirred.
The doors burst open.
Boots struck stone.
All servants immediately withdrew their hands and lowered their heads as the man entered.
Riften AORTA.
The youngest son of the Aorta bloodline.
The forgotten son.
The worthless son.
Silas felt the man before he could see him. The presence was warm. Fierce. Wounded.
Riften crossed the room in three swift steps and took the baby gently from his wife's arms.
The moment his hands touched Silas
The crying stopped.
The room exhaled.
Riften stared down at the child, jaw tight, eyes unreadable.
"Silas AORTA," he declared. "That is his name."
No one dared to object.
No one celebrated.
Not a single bell rang in the vast, empty palace known as Tombstone the forgotten estate gifted to Riften by his dead mother. A palace too large for a man no one acknowledged. Cold. Metallic. Echoing with neglect.
The birth of shadows was never celebrated.
Silas breathed.
For the first time
He breathed freely.
The pressure was gone.
The crushing presence that had once filled every corner of his existence....
The endless pull of the Machine Heart...
It was distant now.
Muted.
He felt blood flow.
Heat.
Air.
Smell.
Sound.
His senses were no longer drowned in static.
And with that clarity came memory.
Not in words.
In shards.
Fog and gears.
Screams without mouths.
Truth without mercy.
A family collapsing under knowledge too heavy for human minds.
Not murder.
Overload.
The Machine Heart had demanded silence.
Silence was necessary for signal integrity.
And Silas...
The Listener...
Obeyed… because he could not disobey.
Listeners were not chosen by blood.
They were born as biological receivers rare neural configurations capable of interpreting the Heart's pulse.
Hearing it usually shattered the mind.
Most went mad in minutes.
Some lasted days.
None lived long.
Except Silas.
He had been a perfect conductor.
And eventually, conductors burn out.
That was why Raymond AORTA had said:
"Not yet."
Silas did not understand why he had been spared.
Only that he had been delayed.
A few months passed… and on a storm lashed night, rain pelted the palace roof as pain tore through Silas's body, metal shrieking and twisting in answer to his cries.
The entire room shuddered.
Candles flickered violently as every object made of iron bent.
Knives slid across tables.
Chains twisted inward.
The cradle folded slightly at the edges as if bowing.
The servants screamed.
The baby cried.
And the metal answered.
It crawled.
It screamed.
It scraped itself bloody against the stone floor to get closer.
Riften and Rita heard the commotion and stepped forward without hesitation while Rita waited for it to calm down to hold her son into her warmth...
A blade driven by invisible force sliced across his forearm.
Blood sprayed.
Still, he did not stop.
He walked through screaming steel and collapsing metal and reached the cradle.
The moment he lifted Silas...
The room fell silent.
The metal dropped lifelessly to the floor.
Riften pressed his bleeding forehead to the child's.
"It's alright," he whispered hoarsely.
"I'm here."
They came running.
Servants crowded the hallway, drawn by the sound.
They saw the blood.
They saw the bent metal.
And they understood something they were never meant to understand.
Fear spreads faster than truth.
And truth spreads faster than mercy.
Riften turned slowly to face them.
His voice was calm.
"I cannot allow Ravien to learn of this."
The servants tried to run.
They did not make it far.
The screams lasted less than a minute.
Blood slid beneath the door in thin, silent rivers.
Rita never saw it.
When the door reopened, Riften stepped back inside quietly, closing it behind him.
He took his son from Rita's trembling arms and placed a gentle kiss on Silas's forehead.
Outside, Tombstone Palace returned to stillness.
Inside, the Machine Heart stirred
distant, patient, waiting.
Far beneath cities.
Far beneath dynasties.
The god engine pulsed once.
And listened.