The city was bleeding, and it didn't even know it yet.
Every morning the newspapers screamed louder. Politicians begged for calm. Priests lit candles with trembling hands. Constables patrolled in pairs now, pistols loose at their hips and fear tighter across their faces. Spiral markings had begun to appear on walls, carved into doors, whispered through alleys like prayers for the damned.
It was beautiful.
Carmen watched from the balcony of their rented flat, a cigarette burning low between her fingers, the wind snapping the edges of her coat like a black flag. Behind her, Julian sat in the shadows, sharpening a blade against the worn leather of his boot, each stroke steady, hypnotic.
Vivienne hovered near the doorway, her notebook clutched to her chest, stained with ink she could no longer wash away. She wrote because she was afraid not to, because the act of recording made her feel invisible, safe, as if by becoming a witness, she could somehow spare herself.
She was wrong.
Carmen flicked the cigarette over the railing and watched the ember vanish into the dark before speaking.
"We need more hands."
Julian's blade paused mid-stroke. He looked up, his eyes catching the faint light.
"Pawns," he said, understanding immediately.
Carmen smiled, slow and sharp. "Disciples," she corrected, tasting the word. "Broken things. Starving for purpose. Easy to lead. Easier to destroy."
Julian nodded once. It was always easier to build an army from ashes.
Vivienne shifted, clutching her notebook tighter.
"How?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Carmen turned from the railing, arms loose at her sides, casual as a wolf in an empty pasture.
"We don't find them," she said. "We let them find us."
She gestured toward the city below, at the fear rotting through its veins.
"They're already looking."
Julian rose from his chair in one fluid motion, tucking the blade into his belt. He crossed to Vivienne, moving slow, deliberate, and tapped the notebook lightly with one finger.
"You," he said, "will be the signal."
Vivienne blinked up at him, confusion mixing with terror.
"You'll write," Carmen said, stepping closer, voice low and coaxing. "But not just anything. You'll write what they're hungry to hear."
Vivienne swallowed hard, her throat clicking.
"You'll create the hunger," Julian finished.
"And we'll feed it," Carmen said.
Vivienne nodded because she didn't know how not to. Saying no wasn't survival anymore. It was suicide.
The next days blurred into a quiet frenzy.
Vivienne's stories began appearing in the forgotten corners of the city—anonymous letters left on pub counters, folded into prayer books, slipped under the doors of desperate men. Tales of the Spiral. Promises of power, of belonging, of being seen in a city that had long since turned its back.
It didn't take long.
By the third night, the first of them came. A boy no older than sixteen, hollow-eyed and scarred, waiting near the fountain at Holloway Square, a crude spiral scratched into the leather of his boots. Julian spotted him first. They didn't approach. They let him follow.
The second came the night after. Then the third.
The broken ones. The angry ones. The ones who looked at the world and saw nothing left to save.
Carmen catalogued them the way a butcher studies meat. Weight. Temperament. Potential for violence. And most importantly, loyalty—or the illusion of it.
They didn't need soldiers.
They needed sacrifices.
Vivienne watched it unfold, her pen scratching frantic across the pages, her heart sinking deeper with every line. Some part of her still clung to the belief she was different, separate. She wasn't. She had already been swallowed whole, spinning deeper into the spiral, whether she understood it or not.
And Carmen saw it.
She saw the cracks widening, the way Vivienne flinched at the blood but stayed anyway. Loyalty, cowardice—it made no difference. The end would be the same.
On the fifth night, they gathered at the abandoned church south of Whitechapel.
The boys shuffled nervously in the broken pews, dirt smudging their hands, faces pale in the flickering candlelight. Carmen stood at the altar, framed by charred ruins of holy symbols, her shadow sprawling long behind her. Julian moved through the crowd like a wolf among lambs, his mere presence enough to keep them silent.
Vivienne stood just inside the door, invisible and unimportant.
Carmen lifted her hands, a simple, terrible gesture.
The room stilled.
She didn't speak of gods.
She didn't speak of redemption.
She spoke of hunger.
Of rot.
Of power clawed from the marrow of a dying city.
She spoke to the broken parts of them, the parts already crumbling under the weight of their own failures.
And when she finished, when the echoes of her voice had faded into the soot-stained walls, they knelt. Every one of them.
Not out of faith.
Out of desperation.
Carmen caught Julian's eye across the bowed heads. His smile was slow, sharp.
The board was set.
The game had begun.
And London—sweet, stupid London—would bleed for every move they made.