Oakhaven always woke to the same scent: a damp mixture of coal steam and oxidized metal.
Evelyn von Valerius stared at her reflection in a silver mirror, slightly blurred by the morning mist. Her face was composed, her skin pale—the mark of nobility rarely touched by the sun—and her blue eyes stared back without expression.
"The corset is too tight today, Martha," Evelyn said flatly. Her voice was nearly drowned by the roar of the steam engines from the textile factory at the end of the street.
"It is the latest trend from the capital, Milady. A slender waist is the mark of a disciplined noble," Martha replied, pulling the laces with mechanical efficiency, as if her own hands were part of the gears that drove this household.
Evelyn took a shallow, constricted breath. The weight of her layered silk gown felt like the physical burden of the Valerius name. She stepped toward the window, brushing a thin layer of black soot from the wooden sill with her fingertip.
Below, Oakhaven was crawling to life. Freight carriages rattled over wet cobblestones while workers in drab grey coats marched in unison toward the docks. The world was deafeningly loud, yet somehow, Evelyn felt it was dead.
"The schedule for today, Martha?"
"Ten o'clock: Modern History. One o'clock: Tea at Baroness Moore's. And at four in the afternoon: The Lord Duke requests your presence to discuss the household budget."
Evelyn gave a curt nod. Her life was a fixed rail—no room for surprises.
As she descended the stairs toward the dining hall, her pace slowed as she passed the locked cellar door beneath the staircase. It was a repository for the relics of her great-grandfather, an explorer who had been branded a failure by the family for his obsession with mystical legends.
Normally, Evelyn would have ignored it. But today, something was different. A faint whisper—or perhaps merely her imagination—echoed from behind the dusty crevice of the door.
Evelyn glanced at the silver knife on the dining table, seeing her reflection looking like a captive in a gilded cage. She wondered if, in a world driven by steam and logic, there was still room for the... impossible.