Season 2, Episode 21 — Silas Unmasked
Timeline: Dawn after Ep 20. Zack = Level 41. Ledger active. The city's awake and pretending it isn't.
⸻
Cold Open — A Door the City Doesn't List
Silas led them to an address that didn't exist. No number. No buzzer. Just a rusted roll-up gate on a block where warehouses forgot their names.
He palmed the corrugated metal once. It shivered like a dog recognizing an old hand. The gate rose.
Inside: a garage that had once been an auto shop and then a church and then a rumor. Benches. Concrete. A chalk circle on the floor. On the back wall, a welded tree of rebar held hooks—each bearing something that wasn't a weapon and also was: a broken violin, a subway token on a chain, a stethoscope, a rosary with two beads missing. Memory turned into tools.
Luna whistled. "If a thrift store ate a monastery."
Silas didn't smile. "It's where I learned not to die."
Zack's HUD flickered a polite warning:
LOCATION: Off-ledger sanctuary (unmapped).
Note: Oath resonance will behave oddly here.
Caution: Training zones can hurt.
"Good," Zack said, stepping over the chalk. "I need hurt."
Silas watched him like an instructor trying to like his best student. "You need shape."
"Same thing," Zack said.
"Only when you're lucky," Silas said, and snapped his fingers once.
The room tightened.
Sound damped. Air grew heavy—salt and iron and something that felt like a bad memory. Zack's steel hummed on its own, like it had heard a song from another lifetime.
Silas rolled his sleeves. The scars there were surgical and ancient, overlapping like cities built on cities. "We're not sparring. We're breaking you down and reassembling the pieces in an order that won't kill strangers."
"Romantic," Luna said, leaning against the rebar tree, axe idle on her shoulder.
"It is," Silas said. "I loved the man who taught me."
Zack blinked. "Past tense?"
Silas met his eyes. "Prestige took him. He paid the wrong cost."
The room listened. Zack did too.
⸻
Act I — How Prestige Really Works
Silas drew a circle on the concrete with chalk that glowed faint as if the room remembered better lighting. He motioned Zack into the center.
"Prestige," he said, voice precise as a scalpel, "isn't a level. It's a metamorphosis. You cash in everything you've learned and sacrifice something you can't counterfeit. The world agrees you're a new thing. That agreement is power."
Zack's HUD highlighted the words as if underlining them in a textbook he would bleed on later:
PRESTIGE (Theory):
— Requires: Two Locks
1) City Lock — a public acknowledgment that changes how the city routes itself around you (unlock: myth threshold)
2) Self Lock — a personal sacrifice irrevocable (memory, tether, breath)
— Result: Convert level cap → Prestige 1 (stats rebase, skills evolve)
— Side effect: Oath hardens; mistakes cost more
Silas paced the circle's edge. "When I Prestiged, I gave up… truth." He smiled without humor. "I can no longer speak a completely honest sentence. The universe edits me. When I try, it changes the target. That's the cost that stuck."
Luna blinked. "Well, that explains everything."
Zack frowned. "Why that?"
"Because I chose badly," Silas said simply. "Because I wanted power more than I wanted to be a good man. Prestige doesn't forgive motives. It invoices them."
Zack's jaw flexed. "What will mine take?"
Silas's eyes softened unexpectedly. "Something you love more than your vow. There aren't many."
Zack saw a hospital room and a hand slackening in his, and he looked away, breath wired with knives.
Silas clapped once. "Enough theology. We train."
⸻
Act II — Drills (Make It Hurt, Make It Clean)
Drill 1: Oathwave Discipline
Silas tossed a subway token from the rebar tree. "Crowd control without collateral," he said. "Oathwave is a sledgehammer. You need a scalpel."
Zack set his feet, felt the Oathwave coil in his sternum. He pulsed it. The air thumped outward in a radius; dust motes hung in suspension like held breath.
Luna staggered a half step and flipped him off. "Warn me next time."
Silas shook his head. "You stilled everything. That's not rescue. That's a freeze frame. You want flow, not stasis." He stepped into the circle, two fingers tapping Zack's chest above the heart. "Pulse in arcs. Not circles."
Zack tried again. He imagined a crescent instead of a bomb. The wave swept, bending around Luna and the token, stalling imaginary pedestrians in a corridor instead of a panic puddle.
OATHWAVE (R1): Arc mastered — cost ↓ in partials; crowd flow bonus ↑
"Better," Silas said. "Again. Faster. Harder."
Zack did. He did until his ribs felt like drumheads and his eyes burned. The room drank the sound and told him to keep pouring.
Drill 2: Micro-Tethers
Silas hung a ring of padlocks from the rebar tree. "Rank 7 got you micro-tethers. Pick three without touching the others."
Zack flicked invisible lines. Click—second from the left; click—top right; click—bottom. The other locks swung but didn't open. He grinned.
"Now while I try to kill you," Silas said, and pitched a handful of bone flares he'd absolutely stolen from the market.
Zack's world narrowed. He cast Shield Yank across trajectories, dragging a rolling cart into one arc, a fire blanket into another, catching the last with his teeth and spitting it into a bucket.
"Hot," Luna said, admiring. "Do it with my axe in the air."
She hurled her axe at his head without warning. He Hearthchained the haft mid-flight, reversed it, and slung it back. She caught it, smirking. "Okay."
Zack panted. The HUD hummed approval.
HEARTHCHAIN (R7): Lockpick proficiency ↑; Interception count ↑
Drill 3: Pain Accounting
"Ledger," Silas said quietly. "Call it up. Read it."
Zack didn't want to. He did anyway. Numbers crawled across his sight—saves, indirects, debt risk forecast, Oath bonuses. The six from the senior home were highlighted in a color that made his teeth ache.
"Again," Silas said, mean because mercy here was cruel. "Read it until you hate it differently."
The third time through, the numbers blurred into faces. He recognized the woman with the pink slipper. The lifeguard with the cracked lip. The ferry deckhand with the nervous hands. The six he didn't save stayed numbers. That was the hurt he needed.
"Good," Silas said, seeing his jaw. "Hate the right thing."
Luna thumped his shoulder with her forehead. "And now we go break something that deserves it."
As if rehearsed, the city rang.
⸻
Act III — Field Test: The Organ Yard
The call hit every frequency: an organ transport hub—real-world, above-board—was being hijacked. Ambulances that were actual ambulances. Drivers who were actual drivers—until the shadows around them got ideas.
"Marrow adjusts," Silas said. "If he can't flood the city in bodies, he'll choke it by removing parts. Hang a heart shortage over an ICU and watch heroism curdle."
They hit the yard in six minutes and too many seconds. Chain-link fence. Floodlights. Box trucks. Coolers labeled with hospital tags. Screams.
Shades in EMT jackets moved like choreographed theft, loading coolers into an unmarked semi with a smug plate that didn't exist. Two Surgeons supervised with bone tablets. A third slashed a tire on a real rig for spite. A driver lay on the asphalt, breathing shallow through blood and shock.
Zack didn't speak. He tore the fence open with both hands. Luna hit the near Shade like a car accident taught manners. Silas stepped into the yard and made the floodlights stutter in a way that blinded only people who deserved it.
Hearthchain snapped—six micro-tethers—click on coolers rolling toward the semi, click on the driver's belt, click on a Surgeon's tablet, click on the semi's air brake line (thank you, token memory of Silas), click on the unmarked plate, click on the padlock to the loading bay.
He yanked the brake line first. The semi hissed and settled, wheels locking. He dragged the coolers back like fish on a line, one arm flinging the injured driver behind a barricade of purpose. He ripped the padlock off the bay with a thought and the chain sighed open.
A Surgeon screamed a liturgy and flung a syringe the size of discontent. Zack stepped in, let it graze his cheek, grabbed the Surgeon's wrist, and bit—oath-thread sewing a tracking curl into its blood. He headbutted it into the hood of the semi. The siren wailed without permission.
+300 EXP (multi-intercept + rescue)
EXP: 800 / 1000 (L41)
Shades swarmed. Luna became a geometry lesson in no. Silas stood over the driver and tuned his heartbeat like an old radio until it found a station that liked living.
The third Surgeon palmed a flare and popped it. The flame wasn't hot; it was empty—a vacuum of luck. It ate Zack's footing. He stumbled.
The semi driver's door opened. Marrow sat behind the wheel, elbow on the frame, white suit reflecting floodlight halo. Smile polite. "Silas," he said, as if greeting a man at a gallery opening. "It took you longer than I bet."
"Traffic," Silas said.
Zack lunged for the cab. Marrow tapped the horn. The river answered.
Water slithered up from the storm drains around the lot, coiling like hoses that had rebelled. The asphalt darkened in patches that started to writhe.
"Stop," Silas snapped, and reality paused for a single quivering second. Then it remembered it liked Marrow better.
Zack roared, Oathwave in an arc, stalling the motion lines heading toward the coolers, turning stampede into flow away from the truck. He planted Anchor Lines into the semi's frame and the asphalt and held it like a dog on a leash with murder in its throat.
Luna climbed the grill and buried her axe in the hood. The semi shuddered. Marrow's smile didn't move. "You're getting stronger, Zack. It's adorable."
"Get out," Zack said.
"I will," Marrow said. "After a lesson."
He snapped his fingers. The coolers that Zack hadn't yet snagged opened themselves. Dry-ice fog billowed; the scent of untethered things slapped the yard. The Ophidian smell of the river rolled in. The Shades cheered like fans at a fight.
Zack felt the Ledger put up a chart he didn't want: organs vs people vs time.
"Pick," Marrow said, eyes bright. "Save hearts or save bodies."
"Both," Zack said, and did.
Hearthchain micro-tethers fired in a grid—eight, ten, twelve (he bled to do it) — clicks snapping coolers shut, clicks latching straps, clicks choking open storm drain grates so the river fingers poured down instead of up. He threw Shield Yank at a rolling gurney to drag it out of a puddle that wanted to translate to drowning.
+600 EXP
EXP: 1400 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 42
Gain: Oathwave R2 unlocked (radius ↑; precision arcs)
Marrow watched with the joy of a scientist burning a mouse and taking notes. "Yes," he breathed. "Spend. Spend until you can't."
Silas appeared at the driver's side window, coin between two fingers, expression unkind. "Your appointment's over."
Marrow's smile faltered half an inch. "You're more interesting when you lie, Silas."
"Good thing I can't stop," Silas said, and tapped the glass twice.
The safety laminate shattered inward like it remembered it had lost a bet. Marrow released the wheel and slid—or melted—into shadow. The seat was empty except for the smell of clean hospitals and old teeth.
Zack exhaled once, brutal. The yard inched toward quiet. Sirens threaded in from the street; real EMTs flowed like a school of fish that had practiced.
Luna dropped from the grill, boots thumping, hair sticking to her jaw. "We good?"
"We're not dead," Zack said. "So yes."
Silas eyed the rebar tree in his head. "One more lesson. Then I tell you the cost."
⸻
Act IV — The Cost (Confessional)
They limped back to the sanctuary by a route the Ledger didn't know.
Silas didn't turn on the lights. He lit candles instead, their flames small and defiant.
"My teacher was called Father Dawes," he said. "He taught me how to steal seconds from death. He taught me to talk to angles. He taught me that vows are for the people who aren't listening."
Zack watched candlelight lick scars into akimbo shadows.
"I Prestiged in a cathedral full of bodies like the one you sank," Silas went on. "The city sang to me. It offered me a crown if I took the Self Lock like a king. I chose to give up truth because I thought truth was the thing that slowed me down. I thought lying would free me to do more good."
He laughed once, quietly. "Prestige heard the intent, not the words. It took my truth. I can't tell whether I'm a good man anymore. The world won't let me find that sentence."
Luna leaned her axe against the wall and leaned her head against his shoulder, unexpectedly gentle. "You're an asshole," she said. "But a good one."
Silas's mouth tilted. "See? The world lets that through."
He looked at Zack. "When you Prestige, you will choose. The city will ask for something. Memory. Voice. Touch. It will ask for the piece that hurts right."
Zack swallowed steel. "If it asks for my mother's voice, I—" He stopped. The word can't sat there like a nail.
"You'll decide then," Silas said. "Not now. Now you train. Now you save. Now you stop the river and the market and the Tribunal and the man in white from turning you into an idea they can sell."
The room loosened. The chalk circle faded.
Luna shoved Zack's shoulder. "C'mon, chrome-teeth. If you're going to become a myth, at least smell better. Shower. Then we go ruin a fundraiser."
"A fundraiser?" Zack asked.
"For a senator who thinks Shades are a good voting bloc," Silas said mildly. "Come in your worst clothes."
Zack snorted despite the weight in his ribs. "Prestige or die."
Silas raised his candle like a toast. "Preferably in that order."
⸻
Stinger — The Choir Boy
Under a bridge, in a rookery built from bones and wrong music, a boy in tattered choir robes knelt in front of a makeshift altar, hands bloody from clapping during the ship's death.
Marrow stood behind him, hand on his head in benediction with knives in it.
"He's learning, Father," the boy whispered. "He'll open both locks soon."
Marrow's smile was a line drawn with a scalpel. "Yes. And then we'll finally have a conversation worth the city."
He lifted the boy's chin. The child's eyes were full of broken mirrors.
"Go ring the small bells," Marrow said. "We'll need all the city awake for his answer."
The river, below, raised a lazy wave that looked like it was practicing applause.