A shrill whistle cut through the air, rattling glass panes and shaking the bones of the station as the metal beast groaned to a halt. Steam hissed and curled, veiling the platform like some restless phantom. Twenty carriages stretched out like the ribs of some great serpent, black and iron-bound.
Stepping down with a flourish —
though not without a grunt under the weight she dragged — Klara adjusted her half-top hat and tugged at the tuxedo that sat just a touch too properly on her shoulders. She looked every bit the picture of elegance, if not for the comically oversized luggage bag that looked ready to crush her into the stone.
Her polished boots clicked against the ground of Loen's beating heart: Backlund.
The city unfolded in her mind like a book she already half-knew: divided cleanly by the Tussock River, stitched back together by bridges and ferries, swollen with more than five million souls. Prosperity and rot all in one — the crown jewel of the Northern and Southern Continents both.
She tilted her chin up, peering through the veil of yellow smog that clung to everything. Gas lamps already sputtered and burned, trying and failing to chase away the gloom though the clock tower swore it was only half-past six.
"Six, really? Looks like the world's gone and skipped straight to bedtime," she muttered, smirking faintly to herself.
A memory surfaced — a snippet from the Tussock Times.
A gentleman arrives in Backlund, promptly loses his way in the smog, and in desperation asks a drenched passerby, "How do you get to the Tussock River?" The man claps him on the shoulder, smiles, and replies, "Just keep walking straight — I've only just swum from there."
Klara chuckled aloud, drawing a glance from a porter. She waved it off, lips curling. "I'd believe it. If I walk too far, I'll probably drown before I see the river."
Every paper she picked up in this city had something to say about the smog — reporters poking fun at it, satirists wringing jokes out of it, even statisticians tallying up fog days like doomsayers counting plagues. Thirty years ago it had been sixty days of smothering gray a year. Now? Seventy-five. And the number climbed.
It made sense, then, that earnest men and women had birthed clubs with names like The Soot Reduction Association and The Smoke Reduction League. Klara even remembered reading about some bill in September proposing the National Atmospheric Pollution Council.
"Let's see how far that gets," she muttered, setting her luggage down with a thud. The smog hit her nose, acrid and heavy, and she pinched it shut, eyes narrowing against the sting.
Tracing the chain that glinted faintly against her vest, Klara fished out a pocket watch — golden, ostentatious, and just a little too loud for someone pretending to be inconspicuous. She flicked it open with a click, the polished surface catching the dim station lights.
She'd bought it deliberately before leaving her family. Four pounds, ten soli, plus another pound and five for the chain. A ridiculous expense, but one that gnawed at her in ways a silver watch never could.
A silver watch would have been safer, subtler. A match for her temperament. But no… she'd remembered the true essence of the Clown — bold, exaggerated, larger-than-life — and picked the golden one instead. Better to be ridiculous than forget who she was supposed to be.
"...6:39," she muttered, snapping it shut with a sigh. "Not late, not early. Just me stuck in the middle again."
Slipping it back into place, she hefted her cane and her comically oversized luggage bag before letting the crowd carry her out of the steam-choked station.
The flow of bodies pulled her toward the exit, boots steady against the cement-paved road. That was when her instincts twitched — the faintest prickle in her gut. Without changing expression, she veered suddenly, almost lazily, to the side.
A man's hand swiped through the space her pocket had been a moment before. Empty.
Klara didn't even blink. Didn't bother to glance back. In Backlund, pickpockets were as common as smog. If you swatted at every rat, you'd get nothing done.
But someone else did.
A hand shot out, clamping the thief's wrist with casual precision. The pickpocket froze, eyes wide as a voice purred near his ear — a voice half amusement, half warning.
"Tsk, tsk." A wolfish grin curved the stranger's lips as he wagged his finger slowly. "You really ought to be more careful."
Klara stopped mid-step, eyebrows rising. Curious. She turned just enough to watch, her weight cocked onto one hip.
She parted her lips to toss a quip — only to pause when she realized the man wasn't speaking to her at all.
"The Judge's busy at this hour," the stranger continued, tone low and almost singsong, "but you wouldn't want to schedule a meeting with him. No…. Not you."
The thief paled, shook his head furiously, and bolted into the crowd the moment his wrist was freed.
The man chuckled to himself, as if he'd just performed for an invisible audience. "See? Brilliant. I do such an amazing job. Always so smooth, always so sharp." He grinned to no one in particular, muttering a reply to his own words like he was holding both ends of the conversation.
Klara blinked, lips twitching into a bemused smile. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or sigh.
Then, just as abruptly, the man glanced her way — eyes quick, smile sharp. For a moment she thought he might say something. Instead, he only tipped his chin slightly, then turned and vanished into the crowd as if he'd never been there.
She exhaled through her nose, shaking her head as she adjusted her bag. "Backlund, huh? Already giving me characters."
Klara was still faintly amused from the pickpocket incident as she slipped into the stream of pedestrians, cane clicking against the cement-paved road. The crowd carried her toward a wide intersection where a column loomed in the center of a manicured lawn.
At first glance, it looked decorative, like some architect's idea of grandeur. But the longer she stared at the dark plume spilling from its top, the more obvious it became.
"…No. That's a chimney."
Backlund. Of course the city would make pollution look dignified.
She sighed, set her oversized luggage down at her feet, and spread open her newspaper and map. She'd already marked out her possible stops on the train, plans scratched in the margins. All of it neatly prepared.
And yet her eyes drifted, her thoughts spiraling back to the morning, to that moment she'd put on the mask of the Clown and finally understood the part she was meant to play.
The Clown wasn't about juggling or jokes. It was the smile you wore because you knew — truly knew — that no matter how much of fate you glimpsed, you couldn't outrun it. Pain, sorrow, confusion, despair… all tucked behind painted lips. That was the essence. That was the mask.
She felt it, clear as the smog biting her lungs: the potion digesting. One step closer. If she kept "acting" this way, it wouldn't take long to move forward.
But there it was — the wall in front of her. She didn't even know the name of the next Sequence, much less its formula. The Secret Order might have it, but they were as elusive as shadows and twice as treacherous. Always circling the Antigonus family's cursed relics.
Klara worried the edge of her glove with her thumb. She could bait them with what she knew, with that vertical pupil and its impossible symbols burned into her mind. But the bait couldn't be too shiny, too sharp. Otherwise she wouldn't be catching fish — she'd be chumming for sharks. And sharks that not only swallowed you whole but leave no trace.
"...Zaratul," she muttered under her breath. "Roselle's guiding hand. Either still out there, or long gone. Both are problems."
The cold seeped into her shoulders then, snapping her back. She shivered, folding the paper tighter. Enough theorizing. First things first: find a roof.
She flipped to the rental section. One ad was already circled — 15 Minsk Street, Cherwood Borough. Terrace house. 18 soli a week.
She skimmed the page again, reaffirming her decision. She couldn't risk North Borough — too close to the Church of Evernight's headquarters. Empress and Western Borough? Forget it. Choked with nobles and watchful eyes. The harbor, East Borough, the Bridge region? Too poor, too exposed, too desperate.
That left two choices: Hillston, packed with financiers and banks, or Cherwood Borough, quieter and cheaper. The latter won out. Fewer questions. Fewer chances to bump into a Nighthawk who knew her face.
Her eyes flicked down the column, almost skipping, before something caught her.
Not an ad. Not a house. A name. Repeated. Over and over, scattered across different stories.
She froze.
The Phantom Judge.
It wasn't the first time she'd seen it. The title had appeared in papers she'd snatched here and there, but she'd never cared enough to dig. Now, standing at the threshold of Backlund, she couldn't stop herself from reading.
The articles were full of him. A respected figure — dignified, relentless — dismantling cults and exposing corruption in the underbelly of the city.
The Children of the Bleeding Veil had been "cleansed" only last month. The Circle of the Scarlet Lament broken open in Dockside weeks before that. And just last night, according to the paper, yet another "tainted one" had been judged and erased.
Klara read the last lines slowly, lips pressed thin.
Backlund called him a savior. A ghost. A whisper of justice where law failed.
But his words… his signature…
"The city is clean again. One more tainted one erased."
Her fingers tightened around the paper, crinkling it.
"…Phantom Judge," she murmured. "What sort of lunatic are you?"
She folded the news back into neat, stiff creases, her smirk not quite hiding the unease worming into her chest. Klara gathered her papers and her luggage, following the map's lines until she found herself in front of what looked like the mouth of a department store.
Except it wasn't.
Her eyes lit up.
"The metro!" she almost squealed, the word tasting foreign yet thrilling on her tongue.
She'd read about it countless times in the papers, and every mention had stirred the same disbelieving flutter in her chest. A train under the city, carving its way beneath Backlund like some steel serpent? She'd half-thought it an exaggeration. But here it was, real as the smog stinging her eyes.
Her steps quickened, excitement buzzing through her like champagne. A metro!
Inside, she joined the line at the ticketing booth, bouncing slightly on her heels as the cashier silently pointed to the fare board. Klara scanned the neat rows of numbers, her lips twitching.
"Cheaper than I thought," she murmured, fishing out 4 pence. "Melissa would've loved this more than the horses…"
The cashier smacked a ticket into her hand without so much as a glance, and Klara clutched it like a little girl with a carnival pass. She wove her way through security and down the stairs, each step making her heart beat faster.
And then — the platform.
The air was thick with heat, steam, and that delicious hum of machinery. She could feel the vibration in her bones before she heard it:
Choo-choo!
The whistle howled, the sound bouncing off the walls as a monstrous black locomotive slid into the station, steel and fire breathing as one. Pipes hissed overhead, swallowing the smoke into the chimneys above, but Klara hardly cared. Her grin was too wide.
"This is beautiful…" she whispered.
When the doors opened, she let the flood of passengers spill out before she slipped inside, ticket checked, and luggage set at her seat. Second-class. Clean, comfortable, enough to give her space. She smoothed her gloves against her cane, forcing herself to sit still when all she wanted was to press her face against the window like a child.
Then came hurried footsteps.
Klara glanced up. A thin boy burst into the carriage, top hat too big, coat too old, carrying his whole life in a battered haversack. He stammered an apology, flashed his third-class ticket, and slipped away down the train. She tilted her head, watching him go, before shrugging and leaning back.
Her thoughts had just begun to drift when the carriage door banged open again.
More footsteps. Heavier.
Her eyes sharpened.
Several men in black coats and half-top hats filed in, their presence just a little too deliberate to be mistaken for commuters. She studied them quietly, the edge of her lip curling.
But then—
A familiar silhouette caught her.
She froze.
Among the men, with that wolfish grin she'd come to know just earlier that same day.. The same reckless spark danced in his eyes, but more dangerous this time around, resembling a wolf on a hunt for its prey.
And then, before she could dwell on it, the air shifted.
Another figure stepped onto the train.
Tall, immaculate, shadow following him like a cloak. His black coat was cut sharp, black gloves held loosely in one hand. His presence was quiet, but heavy — the kind that demanded space without ever asking.
The Judge.