The sky was bruised with gold.

Sunset in the Sky Towers always looked painted on — as if God Himself had been outsourced and replaced by a marketing firm. From eighty-eight stories above the earth, the old crust of England appeared like a discarded skin. The ruins of London — cradled by ash-slick rivers and choked ley fractures — throbbed dimly beneath the evening haze.

In the restaurant known only as Ascension, silence was engineered. Even the clinking of utensils was absorbed by soft-audio fields that cushioned noise like velvet. Scent, color, mood — all modulated by neural feedback from the diners.

Delphi Zurn sat with her chin delicately poised on one pale knuckle. Her brother Lazar was opposite, toying with his tasting sticks. Both were garbed in iridescent biofabric that shifted hues with their hormones. They looked thirteen, though they had stopped aging years ago. Puberty was obsolete.

Their parents, the Zurn Elders, were seated between them, sharing a bottle of etherwine that shimmered like frozen oil.

“I love when it ends like this,” murmured their mother, adjusting her glass’s stem. Her voice had been sculpted for warmth, though it never reached her eyes. “Just as the world begins to forget its place, we remind it.”

Her husband nodded, gazing down at the shivering chaos below. Explosions in Brixton. Fires in Peckham. Another food vault breached by English Voodoo. “Let them scream. Hunger breeds imagination.”

The children didn’t look. They were already imagining something else.

The waiters arrived — bare-chested, expressionless, their flesh tattooed with utility runes. Each carried a tray wreathed in dry ice. The main course had been summoned.

Lazar’s eyes widened. “Is it… a Numen?”

Delphi inhaled, trembling. “No. A Lushai.”

The body on the plate had been prepared with unspeakable skill. A human form — upright, partially reconstructed — sat in a relaxed pose as if caught mid-breath. Skin flayed into blossoms. Organs presented like rare fruit. Tendons curled into delicate spirals. The face was whole. The eyes were open.

“She’s still alive,” whispered Delphi.

Her mother leaned forward with disinterest, pinching a wafer-thin slice of tissue between her sticks. “Technically. Enough to appreciate our gratitude.”

Lazar traced the curvature of the rib fan. “The balance… look here, the sternum’s been halved, but the lungs still inflate.”

“They do that for aroma,” their father added, swirling his drink. “The scent is dream-coded. She’s remembering something as you eat her.”

Delphi shut her eyes as she tasted. “Peaches.”

Lazar followed. “Ink.”

The Elders chuckled. “That’s childhood. It’s encoded in the medulla. Their first smell becomes their final offering. Fragrance of the soul.”

“She’s looking at us,” said Lazar.

Her eyes moved again. Barely. But enough.

It was subtle — the twitch, the futile effort to speak. The eyes weren’t pleading. They were registering. Trying to understand the moment.

“Her pupils are dilating,” Delphi said. “She can still see.”

Their father raised his glass. “That’s what makes it sacred. The gaze is what completes the dish.”

A bell chimed somewhere. A tone: G♯, long and low.

A server stepped forward and bowed. “The chef would like to know whether the preparation exceeds expectations.”

“The textures are sublime,” their mother replied, dabbing her lips with a blood-colored cloth. “But the fear was slightly undercooked. She accepted her fate too early.”

“We’ll tighten the dream scaffold next time,” the waiter assured.

Delphi suddenly stopped. She had been holding a sliver of scalp, mid-air, between her fingers.

“She blinked.”

“Delphi,” her mother said, with the even tone of a teacher correcting a student, “this is art. Not cruelty. Art requires an audience. What you are witnessing is reverence.”

“She’s crying.”

There was a pause.

Lazar tilted his head. “Or is that the saline glaze?”

Below, the riot was escalating. Black banners and bursts of anti-corporate psalms. One of the protesters had hacked into a Skyfeed and was broadcasting a burning effigy of Choronzon.

The windows dimmed automatically.

The meal continued.

Delphi and Lazar looked at each other — perhaps for the first time in weeks. Something flickered between them, almost like doubt, or maybe just the glint of shared understanding.

Their mother raised her glass again. “To the new appetite.”

They clinked.

The Lushai’s eyes flickered once more. A slow dilation. Not just fear. Not just pain. Something deeper. Awareness.

Delphi whispered, almost imperceptibly: “I think she’s dreaming of us.”

Lazar smiled. “Then she’s part of the genius.”

And they began again.

© Aiwaz, 2025. All rights reserved.