The storm broke over Gethrowne on the night Adrian Holt set aside mercy for invention. Thunder rattled against the iron rooftops, lightning flickered through the smog, and rain hissed against the streets like steam from the city's lungs. To Adrian, it felt less like chance and more like judgment.
His workshop became an operating theatre. Tables once cluttered with blueprints and spare gears had been cleared for a single patient. Tools gleamed beneath the gaslamps: scalpels honed to a hair's edge, clamps of brass, sutures of silver thread. At the center of it all lay Elara, her body fragile against the leather straps that bound her gently but firmly to the table.
She had insisted on looking at him one last time before the mask descended over her mouth.
"Adrian," she whispered, voice ragged with both weakness and resolve. "If I wake, and I'm not… me… promise me you'll stop."
His throat tightened. He wanted to tell her everything would be fine, but the lie caught on his tongue. Instead, he kissed her hand and said the only truth he knew.
"I love you. That will never change."
Her faint smile lingered even as the aether anesthetic lulled her into silence.
Adrian pulled down his goggles and began.
---
The hours blurred. Adrian worked with feverish precision, every incision a battle against both flesh and fear. He cut away the heart that had betrayed her, setting it aside like a relic of mortality. The brass-and-crystal heart waited on its tray, glowing faintly, its steady pulse mocking the silence of her chest.
At last, trembling, he placed it within her. He fused brass veins to living arteries, bound crystal chambers where muscle had once pulsed. She lay motionless, pale as marble, neither alive nor gone.
"Live," he whispered, flicking the aether switch.
The core flared. The heart pulsed. Once. Twice.
Elara gasped.
Her back arched, eyes flying open. A cry tore from her lips—raw, ragged, unearthly—and then her chest rose and fell with new rhythm. Adrian nearly wept, clutching her hand.
"Elara—it works. You're alive!"
Her fingers curled weakly around his. She was alive. She was here.
---
By dawn, the storm had passed. The city outside stirred in smoky silence, but in Adrian's workshop, light and laughter returned—or so it seemed. Elara sat upright for the first time in weeks, wrapped in blankets, color in her cheeks.
"I can breathe without pain," she said, her voice stronger, almost vibrant. "Adrian… you've given me back my life."
He smiled, exhausted but radiant. "No. You held on. I only gave you something to hold with."
Her laugh spilled out bright and sudden—too sudden. The sound filled the room, but when it stopped, it stopped sharply, like a song cut mid-note.
She frowned faintly, flexing her hands. "Everything feels different. The light is… sharper. The air tastes metallic. I can hear the clock across the square—it ticks too slowly."
Adrian stiffened.
Her green eyes met his, but for a fleeting instant, something shimmered within them—a faint reflection of blue, like the glow of the aether core. So faint that he almost doubted he saw it.
"Elara…" he began carefully.
She tilted her head, smiling softly. "Don't look so stricken, love. I'm alive. Isn't that what matters?"
He forced himself to nod. "Yes. That's all that matters."
She reached out, fingers brushing his cheek. Her touch was warm—too warm, like metal left near a flame.
"Yes," she said again, with that same small smile. "I'm here."
But as dawn spilled across the windows, Adrian realized her heartbeat—once familiar in the rhythm of her breaths—was no longer in time with his own.
And for the first time, he wondered if the woman who looked back at him was truly Elara, or something else wearing her smile.