The bells of Saint Ruel's Quarter tolled six times before the sun dared climb above the smoke. Dawn in Ardenthall never arrived gently. It crawled through soot-stained alleys and sluggish rivulets of fog, its light smothered by chimneys and the endless breath of steam engines. Even the air seemed tired — heavy with coal dust and the faint metallic tang of rainwater sluicing down iron gutters.
The streets of Barrow Ward were already alive, though "alive" here meant bleary-eyed dockhands shuffling toward the river yards, laundry women balancing baskets on their hips, and children with too-large coats picking their way through puddles for a few coins. Above it all, the great gears of the tramline turned with a low groan, hauling the first passenger cars of the day down cobbled avenues.
A young woman hurried along one of those avenues, her boots clicking sharply on wet stone.
Elira Vance kept her chin tucked against the chill, a stack of newspapers wedged under one arm and a weathered leather satchel bumping against her hip. The hem of her skirt was already damp from the morning rain, but she walked briskly all the same, weaving between fishmongers hauling crates and a ragged preacher shouting verses to nobody in particular.
She was late — not disastrously so, but late enough that Mr. Fornell at the Harrows Ledger would lift one eyebrow when she arrived. He always did.
A gust of wind blew down the street, rattling the loose panes of a second-story window and carrying with it the smell of yeast and smoke from a nearby bakery. Elira paused for half a second, watching the line outside the breadhouse grow — mostly men, shoulders slumped, some with the unmistakable look of factory injuries under their coats. Two boys near the back argued over a single copper penny, their shouts thin and sharp in the damp air.
She opened her small reporter's notebook and scribbled, "Bread queues longer this week. Inflation rising. Dockworkers' strike still unresolved?" The act was instinctual by now — half her reporting began with details nobody else noticed.
The assignment waiting for her this morning was dull: a profile on a watchmaker experimenting with new escapement mechanisms. She would write it, of course — but her real interest lay elsewhere. Whispers of a manuscript had been circulating in backroom taverns and printing houses alike. The Ferryman's Ledger, they called it. Supposedly, a list of names appeared within its pages days — sometimes hours — before those names turned up in the city's obituary columns.
It was nonsense. It had to be.
And yet… Elira could not shake the feeling there was a story buried beneath the superstition.
---
Across the river in the Grafton District, Inspector Aldren Marr was running late, too — though his reason was less noble. He stood in the narrow kitchen of his townhouse, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, staring down a stubborn cufflink as though it were a suspect refusing to confess.
"You'll be late again," said a voice behind him.
Marr turned to see his daughter leaning against the doorframe, satchel in hand, her hair still a mess of sleep. Clara, twelve and endlessly unimpressed, watched him with the same skeptical expression her mother once had.
"Not if I run," he muttered, struggling the cufflink into place.
"You always run," she said, deadpan.
"Habit," he replied, reaching for his coat.
She rolled her eyes — a gesture that seemed to grow more practiced every day — and shouldered her bag. "Mrs. Greeves says you missed the school fair last week."
Marr froze briefly, coat half on. "Work," he said softly. "There's been a case."
There was always a case.
Clara didn't respond. She simply nodded — a small, polite nod that somehow carried the weight of a hundred unsaid things — and left for school. Marr watched her go, the familiar ache settling into his chest, before his eyes drifted to the envelope on the kitchen table.
It bore the sigil of the Ministry of Public Order. The wax seal remained unbroken. Transfer Order — Internal Affairs Division. He hadn't decided whether to open it.
By the time he stepped onto the street, the morning drizzle had turned into a light rain. The gas lamps were still burning, their orange glow distorted by water and fog. Marr turned up his collar and walked briskly toward the canal.
Another body had been pulled from the water at dawn.
No signs of drowning. No water in the lungs. Just a faint carving on the victim's wrist — a pattern of intersecting lines, almost like a broken compass. The same mark had appeared on two bodies before this one. The coroner couldn't make sense of it. Neither could Marr. But someone, somewhere, was trying to send a message.
---
At the far edge of Ardenthall, beyond the factories and tramlines and the choking weight of industry, Whitethorn Monastery woke to its own rhythm. Dawn came here with the smell of damp earth and the quiet tolling of iron bells.
Brother Ilven rose from his straw pallet as he always did — before the first prayer, before the first chime. Habit was a form of faith. He washed his face in cold water, trimmed the wick of the chapel lamp, and walked the long stone corridor toward the archives.
But when he reached the oak door, something felt wrong. It was open.
The monastery's archives were always locked. Only Ilven and the abbot had keys.
He pushed the door gently and stepped inside, lantern light scattering dust motes into gold flecks. Nothing appeared disturbed — the shelves still heavy with parchment and scrolls, the air still carrying that familiar scent of ink and vellum. And yet, on the central reading table, a single scroll lay unfurled.
Ilven approached it slowly. The parchment was brittle with age, its edges eaten by centuries. But the symbol scrawled across the top in fading ink was unmistakable — a pattern of intersecting lines, sharp and deliberate. A broken compass.
He had seen it once before, in a text he was forbidden to read. They had called it The Path of the Nameless Star — a heretical order erased from history three hundred years ago. He had assumed the symbol died with it.
Apparently not.
---
By midmorning, the fog was finally beginning to lift, peeling back from the skyline to reveal the jagged teeth of Ardenthall's rooftops. Elira pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders and crossed into Bellfounder Lane, the damp cobblestones slick beneath her boots.
A tram roared past, brass whistle screaming, and for a brief moment she caught her reflection in its window — pale, determined, and utterly unaware of how deep the waters beneath her feet truly ran.
Half a mile away, Marr stood by the edge of the canal, rain dripping from the brim of his hat. He watched silently as the constables lifted another pale, lifeless shape from the water. Same mark. Same story.
And in the quiet of Whitethorn Monastery, Brother Ilven knelt before the forbidden sigil and whispered a prayer to a god that no longer had a name.
The bell of Saint Ruel tolled again — once, twice — its echo rolling across the waking city. And somewhere, beneath the soot and steam, something that had long been sleeping stirred.