Ethereal Chains

The fog in the city of Vourghast did not roll in; it rose. It seeped from the cobblestones like the breath of a buried giant, tasting of coal smoke, brine, and the copper tang of unspilled blood. In the gas-lit district of the Harrow-Mines, the fog was thick enough to obscure a man’s hand at the end of his arm, but it could not hide the Chains.

To the uncursed eye, the citizens of Vourghast walked freely. They bustled through the markets, haggled over prices of synthetic bread, and hurried home to their warmth. But to Dorian Graves, they were all prisoners.

Dorian stood on the gargoyle-lined precipice of the Clocktower, his long leather duster heavy with dampness. He adjusted his spectacles—lenses ground from the quartz of the Spirit Realm—and looked down at the street below.

The world shifted. The gray fog receded, replaced by a kaleidoscope of glowing, translucent tethers.

Every living soul below had a Chain.

Most were thin, silver threads that trailed behind people like comet tails, connecting them to their pasts, their loves, or their griefs. A mother walking with her child had a bright, golden link connecting her heart to the boy’s. A merchant counting coins had a heavy, bronze chain wrapped around his neck, tethered to his shop. These were the Natural Chains—the bonds of emotion and duty.

But Dorian wasn’t looking for the Natural. He was looking for the Iron.

“There,” he whispered, his breath clouding the cold air.

Amidst the delicate web of silver and gold, a jagged, rusted black line cut through the crowd. It was thick, ugly, and pulsed with a necrotic green light. It didn’t float; it dragged, heavy and cruel, connected to the ankle of a man moving with a strange, lurching gait.

The man was running.

Dorian didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the ledge.

He didn’t fly; he fell with style, his coat snapping in the wind. He fired his grappling hook—a pneumatic device of his own invention—and swung from a lamppost, landing in a crouch on the wet pavement ten feet behind the running man.

The man froze. He turned, his face a mask of sheer terror. He was young, perhaps twenty, dressed in the tattered finery of a disgraced noble. But it was his eyes that told the story—they were milky white, devoid of pupils.

“Please,” the young man gasped, clutching his chest. “I didn’t... I didn’t sign it!”

Dorian stood up, towering over the boy. He looked at the black chain clamped around the boy’s ankle. It trailed off into the darkness of an alleyway, pulling tight.

“The Ethereal Court doesn’t require a signature, boy,” Dorian said, his voice a low rumble like distant thunder. “It requires a debt. Who holds the other end?”

“I don’t know!” the boy screamed. “I just wanted to see her again! My wife! The medium said... he said for a price, I could bring her back!”

The black chain jerked violently. The boy was pulled off his feet, dragged backward toward the alley darkness. He clawed at the cobblestones, his fingernails breaking.

“Help me! It burns!”

Dorian drew his weapon. It wasn’t a gun, nor a sword. It was a pair of shears—oversized, made of a shimmering, translucent metal called Star-Steel. The only material capable of cutting an Ethereal Chain.

“Hold still,” Dorian commanded.

He lunged. The chain whipped out like a serpent, striking at Dorian. It was semi-corporeal, hitting his shoulder with the force of a sledgehammer. Dorian grunted, absorbing the blow, and rolled forward.

He brought the shears down.

SNIP.

The sound was not metallic. It was a scream—a high-pitched, psychic wail that shattered the glass of the nearby streetlamps.

The black chain was severed. The loose end recoiled into the darkness, hissing like a wounded animal. The shackle around the boy’s ankle dissolved into black smoke.

The boy lay on the ground, sobbing, clutching his leg. The milky whiteness faded from his eyes, returning to a natural brown.

Dorian didn’t comfort him. He stared into the dark alley where the chain had retreated.

“You’re lucky,” Dorian said, holstering the shears. “Usually, the chain takes the leg with it.”

“Who... who are you?” the boy stammered.

“I’m the janitor,” Dorian muttered, turning away. “I clean up the messes people make when they try to cheat death.”

He began to walk away, but a sensation stopped him. A vibration.

It wasn’t coming from the boy. It was coming from his own chest.

Dorian unbuttoned his shirt. There, right over his heart, was the start of a chain. But this one wasn’t silver, gold, or black.

It was invisible to everyone, even him. But he could feel the weight of it. It was the Chain of the Void, the curse that had bound him to this city for a hundred years. And for the first time in a decade, it was pulling.

It was pulling him East. Toward the Old Quarter. Toward the Asylum.

“Something has changed,” Dorian whispered to the fog.

The Blackwood Asylum had been abandoned for fifty years, ever since the Great Fire of 1890. It stood on a cliff overlooking the churning sea, a skeletal monument to madness. The roof was gone, the windows were gaping maws, and the stone walls were stained with soot that the rain could never wash away.

Dorian arrived at the gates at midnight. The pull in his chest was agonizing now, a hook dragging him forward.

He pushed the rusted gates open. They screamed in protest.

The courtyard was overgrown with black brambles. But amidst the weeds, Dorian saw something that made him draw his shears again.

Footprints. Not in the mud, but in the aether.

Glowing, violet footsteps burned into the psychic fabric of the world. Someone had walked here recently—someone with immense power.

Dorian followed the trail. It led through the rotted front doors, down the main hall, and stopped at the entrance to the basement.

The basement door was welded shut. Or it had been. Now, the metal was torn open, peeled back like the lid of a tin can.

Dorian descended. The air grew colder with every step. The smell of the sea faded, replaced by the scent of ozone and ancient dust.

He reached the bottom. He was in the Maximum Security Ward. Cells lined the walls, their bars bent and broken.

But it was the center of the room that held his attention.

A circle had been drawn on the floor in fresh blood. Inside the circle sat a chair. And in the chair sat a corpse.

It was a man, dressed in a modern suit, but his skin was gray and desiccated. His mouth was sewn shut with silver wire.

And radiating from his chest were hundreds of chains.

They were everywhere. A web of spectral iron filling the room. Some chains went into the floor, some into the walls, some vanished into thin air.

“A Hub,” Dorian breathed, horror dawning on him. “They turned him into a Hub.”

“He was a volunteer, actually.”

The voice came from the shadows of a cell.

Dorian spun around, shears raised.

A woman stepped into the light of his lantern. She was tall, wearing a dress of dark velvet that seemed to absorb the gloom. Her skin was pale as porcelain, her lips painted a blood-red. She held a parasol, though they were underground.

“Lady Elara,” Dorian said, his voice dripping with disdain. “I should have known. Wherever there is a perversion of the natural order, the Crimson Court is nearby.”

Elara smiled, revealing teeth that were slightly too sharp. “Dorian. Still playing the hero? Still cutting the strings?”

“What have you done?” Dorian gestured to the corpse. “This is... this is an abomination. You’ve anchored hundreds of souls to a dead man.”

“Not dead,” Elara corrected, tapping her parasol on the floor. “Preserved. This is Mr. Sterling. He was a very wealthy man who feared the afterlife. He paid us to ensure he would never move on. We simply... expanded his capacity.”

“You’re using him as a battery,” Dorian realized. “You’re harvesting the energy of the bound souls to power... what?”

“To power the breach,” Elara said casually.

She snapped her fingers.

The chains attached to the corpse suddenly went taut.

The corpse’s eyes snapped open. They were burning with violet fire.

A low hum filled the room. The air began to vibrate. The circle of blood on the floor ignited.

“Dorian, meet the Architect,” Elara said, stepping back.

The corpse opened its mouth, tearing the silver sutures. A sound erupted—not a scream, but a frequency. A sound so low it vibrated Dorian’s bones.

The reality of the room began to crack. The walls dissolved into static.

Through the cracks, Dorian saw it.

The Other Side.

It wasn’t a heaven or a hell. It was a vast, endless ocean of gray water, beneath a sky of static. And floating in the water were millions of chains, drifting aimlessly.

“You’re trying to bridge the worlds,” Dorian shouted over the noise. “You’ll destroy Vourghast!”

“We are saving it!” Elara yelled back, her eyes wild. “The Ethereal Realm is full, Dorian! The souls have nowhere to go! They are leaking back! We are building a dam!”

“You’re building a bomb!”

Dorian charged. He couldn’t cut all the chains; there were too many. He had to cut the anchor.

He had to kill the corpse.

He sprinted toward the chair, dodging the lashing chains that whipped at him like tentacles. One struck his leg, sending a jolt of freezing cold through his muscles. He stumbled but kept moving.

He reached the circle. The energy was intense, pushing him back like a physical wind.

He raised the Star-Steel shears.

“I release you!” Dorian roared.

He drove the shears down into the corpse’s chest.

The impact was blinding. A shockwave of pure white light exploded from the chair.

Dorian was thrown backward, flying through the air. He hit the wall hard, his head cracking against the stone.

Darkness took him.

But as he faded, he heard Elara’s voice, not angry, but amused.

“Oh, Dorian. You didn’t cut the anchor. You just rang the bell.”