At dawn, mist strangled the crooked streets, swallowing gas lamps and iron fences into a murky oblivion. Elegant carriages rattled past crumbling tenements; gentlemen in silk gloves shared the pavement with barefoot urchins. Every building, every cobbled stone, wore a thin veneer of grace — and beneath it, the smell of something decaying.
It was, Ren decided, perfect.
London — the ever-charming corpse — dressed itself in illusion. Lace and ash. Brass and soot. The city inhaled secrets and exhaled silence, its heart thudding beneath layers of routine and rot. It was a masquerade in architecture, a performance in every spoken pleasantry, and Ren Ayatsuji had come not to admire the stage — but to write its final act.
From his perch above the district of Marrowgate, behind the frost-glazed windows of an aging hotel, Ren watched the world below like a conductor studying an orchestra he had not yet claimed. His fingers rested on the edge of a velvet curtain, pale and steady, as if awaiting an invisible cue. Behind him, a suitcase lay open. Not one stitch of clothing inside — only documents, ink, glass vials, and masks. So many masks.
They would not see him coming. Not truly. Not the barons with their wine-stained lips. Not the dilettantes in their ivory salons. Not the ones who thought they knew the game.
Because they had only ever played it.
And Ren?
Ren had rewritten the rules.
He adjusted his cuffs, silver filigree glinting in the gray light. Somewhere below, a factory whistle screamed like a wounded animal. The day was beginning — another chapter in the fiction they all called truth.
But fiction could be broken. And when it was, the pieces cut deepest.
He turned from the window, his reflection in the glass lingering a moment longer than expected. A flaw in the light. Or something else entirely.
Ren Ayatsuji smiled.
Let the curtains rise.