The night had transformed Mirrorfen Lake into something otherworldly. The swollen moon hung so close it seemed to scrape the city's highest smokestacks, its pale light bleeding across the water like spilled mercury. The carnival's glow—a chaotic tapestry of colored lanterns and steam-powered rides—painted the darkness in garish reds and golds, creating a stark contrast with the quiet, tree-lined promenade where Amir waited.
He sat on a weathered bench, one of several scattered along the water's edge, a cone of Grunfeld's Iron Crisps in his hand. The pastry was still warm, the cinnamon-spiced sugar coating melting slightly against his tongue. It was good. Better than anything he'd eaten since arriving in this godforsaken world. For a moment—just a moment—he could almost forget about the blood, the screams, the weight of everything that had happened.
Almost.
The carnival's distant music drifted across the promenade: the discordant wail of a steam-organ, the mechanical grinding of the Ferris wheel, the shrieks of people on rides that looked like they'd been assembled by someone who'd never seen a human body before. Somewhere in that chaos, families were laughing. Children were eating sweets. Normal people were living normal lives, completely unaware that their city had nearly been torn apart by a coup orchestrated by forces they couldn't comprehend.
Amir took another bite of the Iron Crisp, savoring the sweetness even as his mind churned with darker thoughts.
He pulled a pocket watch from his coat—a gift from the Inquisition, standard issue for field agents. The face was ornate, its brass casing etched with the emblem of a gear within an unblinking eye. The hands read 12:07 AM.
Seven minutes late.
Captain Rustof's description echoed in his mind: A man in a brown coat with a golden collar. Top hat. Monocle. You can't miss him.
Amir scanned the promenade again. A couple walked past, arm-in-arm, lost in each other. An old man fed breadcrumbs to the few remaining ducks that hadn't been scared away by the carnival's noise. A street vendor was closing up his stall, counting coins by lamplight.
No man in a brown coat. No golden collar. No monocle.
Where the hell is this guy?
Amir checked the watch again. 12:12 AM. He'd been waiting for fifteen minutes now, and the anticipation was starting to gnaw at him. Not nervousness—he'd learned to compartmentalize that—but a low, persistent irritation. He had work to do. The tannery was waiting. The VIC Plumber Company investigation was waiting. Every minute spent sitting on a bench was a minute the conspiracy had to deepen its roots.
He took another bite of the Iron Crisp, but the sweetness had lost some of its appeal. His mind was already drifting, pulled back to the darker corners of his thoughts.
Should I even be here?
The question surfaced without warning, cutting through the noise of the carnival and the gentle lap of water against the shore. It was the kind of question that had been lurking in the back of his mind for weeks now, ever since the coup, ever since he'd realized that staying in Echogard meant accepting a life of blood and mystery and danger.
Should I be trying to get home instead?
His mother. He thought about her often, though he'd trained himself to lock those thoughts away during missions. She'd been sick when he left—or rather, when he was taken. Depression, the doctors had said. Chronic fatigue. A general unwillingness to engage with the world. He'd been her anchor, the one thing that kept her tethered to some semblance of normalcy. What was she doing now? Had she called the police? Had they searched for him? Or had she simply... given up? Decided that her son, like everything else in her life, was just another disappointment?
And Captain Squawks. His parrot. The bird had been with him for three years, a gift from a friend who'd moved away and couldn't take the animal with them. Amir had taught him to say "Excel is hell," a joke that had seemed hilarious at the time. Now it felt like a lifetime ago. Was someone feeding the bird? Was Squawks still alive, or had he starved in Amir's apartment, waiting for an owner who would never return?
Where the hell is this guy?
He took another bite of the Iron Crisp, but the sweetness had curdled into something bitter. His mind was doing that thing again—spiraling into thoughts he'd trained himself to suppress during daylight hours. The weight of his mother's face. The sound of Captain Squawks' voice. The question that never quite left him alone: Should I be trying to get home instead?
The carnival's distant music seemed to mock him, a discordant symphony of steam-organs and mechanical laughter. Normal people. Normal lives. None of them knew what it felt like to be erased from existence, replaced by something wearing your face.
He shoved the thought down. No time for that. Focus on the mission. Focus on—
A sound cut through the night.
It started as a distant rumble, the distinctive hiss and grind of a steam-engine working hard against the cobblestones. Amir's head snapped up. A vehicle was approaching from the direction of the carnival, moving with purpose through the quiet promenade. The gas lamps flickered as it passed, casting long, dancing shadows across the water.
It was an expensive steam-wagon. Not the brutish, functional vehicles the Cog-Watchers used, nor the sleek, predatory machines of the Inquisition. This one was something else entirely—a statement of refined taste and considerable wealth. Its chassis was polished to a mirror shine, painted in deep forest green with brass fittings that caught the moonlight. The wheels were wrapped in reinforced rubber, dampening the usual cacophony of metal on stone. Even the steam venting from the engine seemed to dissipate with an almost aristocratic grace.
The wagon slowed as it approached the promenade, its driver—a stern-faced man in a grey uniform—guiding it to a smooth stop near the bench where Amir sat.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the cabin door slid open with a soft, well-oiled hiss.
Smoke billowed out first—not the acrid, industrial reek of typical steam-wagons, but something sweeter, tinged with tobacco and something floral. Expensive tobacco. The kind that cost more than a factory worker made in a month.
The first thing to emerge from the smoke was a cane.
It was elegant in a way that made Amir's modern sensibilities recoil slightly. The shaft was polished ebony, dark as midnight, and the handle was crafted from what looked like ivory inlaid with silver filigree. The tip was capped with a brass ferrule, engraved with the same gear-and-eye symbol that marked Inquisition credentials. The cane didn't look like it was meant for walking—it looked like it was meant for arriving.
Then came the man.
He stepped out of the wagon with the kind of deliberate grace that suggested he'd practiced the motion a thousand times. Tall, perhaps six feet, with the lean build of someone who'd never done manual labor in his life. His face was handsome in an almost unsettling way—sharp cheekbones, a strong jawline, eyes that seemed to catalog everything they saw in a single glance. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, though there was something in his expression that suggested he'd lived longer than his face indicated.
His clothing was immaculate. A brown coat, perfectly tailored, with a golden collar that caught the moonlight and threw it back like a beacon. Beneath it, a cream-colored waistcoat embroidered with subtle patterns that Amir couldn't quite make out. Dark trousers, pressed to knife-edge sharpness. And on his head, a top hat that had probably cost more than Amir's entire wardrobe combined.
But the most striking detail was the monocle.
It hung from a thin chain of white gold, positioned over his left eye. As he stepped fully out of the wagon, he reached up with one gloved hand and adjusted it, the gesture so practiced it seemed almost unconscious. The lens caught the moonlight, flashing like a tiny star.
He surveyed the promenade for a moment, his gaze sweeping across the water, the carnival in the distance, the scattered benches and gas lamps. Then his eyes found Amir.
And he smiled.
It wasn't a warm smile. It was the smile of someone who'd just solved a particularly interesting puzzle. Clinical. Precise. The smile of a man who saw the world as a series of problems waiting to be dissected.
He walked toward Amir with measured steps, the cane tapping softly against the cobblestones—tap, tap, tap—a rhythm that seemed to echo louder than it should. Up close, Amir could see that the man's eyes were a peculiar shade of grey-green, the color of storm clouds over water. They didn't blink as often as they should.
"Amir Zen, I presume," the man said. His voice was smooth