The table shook, breakfast doing its best to remain, and things seemed to fall apart but then it softened.
Ezra dressed in a maid's uniform caught a tilting crystal glass; an Ezra in suit placed a steadying hand on the back of Zara's chair. The ripples in the tea settled instantly, as if the liquid had been ordered to behave.
Mr. Lucius wiped his lips with deliberate care, folding the napkin once before placing it beside his plate—as though concluding a minor ritual. Only then did he look at me.
"Miss Victoria," he said evenly, "if it would not inconvenience you, I would appreciate your assistance."
The request was phrased as courtesy, but the weight behind it was unmistakable.
I nodded. He rose immediately, motioning for the rest of the table to continue their meal, as if nothing of consequence had interrupted it. Chairs scraped softly. Cutlery resumed its quiet diplomacy.
"I am coming as well," Heiwa said, already on her feet.
Halle moved to follow, but Ezra's voice cut in gently, immovable as a law of nature.
"Please enjoy your meal. The safety of our guests is ensured."
The words were calm. Final.
We were already halfway down the corridor when the door closed behind us.
"What was that explosion?" Heiwa asked as we crossed the threshold into the courtyard.
"A gas explosion," Mr. Lucius replied, not slowing.
I stopped short, staring at the plume of grey-black smoke clawing upward into the morning sky.
"A gas explosion?" I repeated. "That's your answer?"
He did not turn.
"But we're not a fire brigade," I went on, irritation bleeding through despite myself. "Not that I wouldn't help, but—"
"The spring of twenty-nine deaths," he said, interrupting gently, "was not composed solely of homicides."
We reached the gate.
"They were a series of different crimes," he continued, "each distinct in method, motive, and execution—yet all resulting in loss of life."
The ironwork groaned open.
"Arm your friend, Pale Duchess."
His cane was suddenly in his hand. I did not see where it came from.
I drew the butterfly swords—húdiédāo—from where I kept them and passed them to Heiwa. She took them without comment, their familiar weight grounding her.
"So," she said as she tested their balance, "the crimes are unrelated on the surface… but share an internal structure."
"Correct."
The world blinked.
We were no longer at the gate.
The air was cooler. Damp. We stood at the foot of a wooded hill, the city now looming behind the trees like a half-remembered threat.
"What was the linking crime," I asked, scanning our surroundings, "if murder itself was only the outcome?"
"Betrayal," Mr. Lucius said.
The word landed with a soft finality, like a stamp pressed into wax.
We moved through the forest quickly—too quickly. The ground ahead was wrong.
The earth had split open.
Not cracked—opened, as though something beneath had decided it was finished waiting.
Thick red clay bubbled upward in slow, obscene pulses. It was wet, viscous, alive in a way soil should never be. It did not flow like mudslides or collapse like sinkholes; it advanced, swallowing roots, stones, the memory of paths.
The center of it all lay further toward the city.
"What is happening," I asked, my voice thinner now, "right now?"
Mr. Lucius stopped at the forest's edge.
I moved to run ahead.
A hand stopped me—not forceful, but absolute.
"Answer your own question," he said calmly. "What is happening. Right now."
He was no longer dressed for breakfast. The suit he wore now looked older, sharper, as if it had been waiting its turn.
"I don't know," I admitted, scanning the scene. "Mud is… seeping up. But this isn't a landslide. There's no source. No rainfall."
The clay was wrong—too red, too dense. It moved with intention.
"This isn't volcanic," I went on, thinking aloud. "It's not lava. There's no heat sloping. No odd gas release."
Heiwa stepped forward, blades flashing once before she sheathed them. She knelt, pressing frost into the ground. The clay slowed—then pushed back harder, swallowing the ice, rewriting its state.
"If I touch this here," I thought, heart racing, "what stops being true over there?"
I considered fire. Superheating. Disruption.
"Is it a structure?" Mr. Lucius asked casually, lighting a cigar. The tip caught flame the moment it met his lips. "Something that can be broken?"
"No," I said slowly. "I don't see joints. Or layers. It isn't built."
"What do you already know will happen if you try to freeze it?" he pressed.
"That it will adapt," I answered grimly. "Or ignore it."
We weren't solving anything. We were circling it—like scholars arguing over a ruin while it continued to sink the city behind us.
"Nothing I do will matter until I decide what I'm allowed to call it," I wondered.
"What is this thing supposed to be?" I asked at last, abandoning tactics for comprehension.
Heiwa stood, her expression tight. "It is a disaster," she said, "but not one produced by neglect or engineering failure."
I turned to Mr. Lucius.
"What do you think this is?"
He removed the cigar, exhaling slowly.
"A myth," he said. "Just as your questions have deduced."
I followed his gaze.
The red clay was littered with fragments—millions of them. Pottery shards. Broken vessels. Bowls, cups, urns, plates. Domestic objects, ritual objects. All ground together, churned into the earth like evidence someone had tried to bury and failed.
And beneath it all—
Voices.
Murmurs pressed up through the soil, too many to separate. Not screams. Not pleas.
Testimonies.
"What myth?" I thought, dread settling heavy in my chest, as the ground continued its patient rewriting of the present.
I looked at Mr. Lucius.
History, it seemed, was no longer content to remain overwritten.