Years passed.
Brasswick rebuilt itself, as cities always do. New towers rose where ruins smoldered, iron bridges stretched across rivers of cooled brass, and the markets thrummed once more with voices bartering over bread and gearwork. Children grew who had never seen the shadow of the Machine, and in their laughter the city pretended to forget.
But Brasswick never truly forgets.
In taverns by the river, old men still whispered of the night the sky turned to brass. In alleyways, scavengers traded shards of mirror said to hum faintly when held too long. And on fog-heavy mornings, when the gaslamps burned low, some swore they heard it:
Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap.
A rhythm deep in the earth.
Elric Veyne had vanished, his cane no longer tapping through the streets. Selene drifted into myth, her shadows fading from alleys and dreams alike. Evangeline lived quietly, her arms scarred with glyphs that never again lit — yet when she gazed into glass, she sometimes thought she saw more than her own reflection.
And always, Brasswick endured. Flawed, fractured, imperfect. Alive.
Because the veil was never meant to lift.
It only shifted — hiding, revealing, waiting.
Somewhere in the fog, beyond sight and sound, a whisper stirred again:
"Error… accounted."