The air in Director Thorne's office was stale with the scent of old secrets and ozone from the chattering telegraph. Light from the gas lamps glinted off the polished wood of his desk, a vast and empty battlefield where Elias was about to commit his first act of treason. Corbin, pale and trembling, was shoved into a chair by the guards, his eyes darting around the room like a cornered rat.
"Report," Thorne commanded. His voice was calm, but his eyes were sharp, analytical, missing nothing.
"Corbin was the asset for the Sons of the Forge," Elias stated, his tone as flat and cold as a mortician's slab. "He gave them access to the train. I apprehended him before he could flee the city. The rest of the cell was neutralized. He is the last thread."
Thorne leaned forward, the gaslight carving deep shadows into his face. "A last thread, Elias? Or the start of a new one you've already cut?" He paused, his gaze intensifying. "This is too tidy. A man like Corbin, a brilliant mechanic by all accounts, throwing in with those fanatics? It doesn't track. Are you absolutely certain there are no other connections?"
For a fraction of a second, Elara's face flashed in Elias's mind. To lie to this man, the one who had forged him into a "living weapon in the service of the Crown", felt like severing his own anchor. But the rage in his heart was colder and stronger than any loyalty. "I am certain," he said, his voice a wall of ice. "The case is closed."
Thorne held his gaze for a long moment, searching for a crack in the facade. Finding none, he sighed, a sound of deep weariness. "Very well. Go home, agent. Get some rest. That is an order."
Home. The word was a phantom. The house he and Elara had chosen was no longer a home, but a mausoleum. He walked through the door into a profound and suffocating silence, a stark contrast to the life that had once filled it. The air still held the faintest trace of her, jasmine and machine oil, a ghost on the edge of his senses. His eyes fell on her favorite armchair, the fabric worn smooth. A memory ambushed him, vivid and brutal in its clarity.
Elara was curled in that chair, a technical journal in her lap, her brow furrowed in concentration. The late afternoon sun streamed through the window, setting fire to the loose strands of her hair. She must have felt his gaze, because she looked up, her serious expression melting into a radiant smile that lit up the entire room. She laughed, a sound that was a "breath of fresh air," a sound he now knew he would never hear again. "Caught me," she had said playfully. "I was just figuring out how to build you a better heart."
He reached out, his fingers tracing the worn arm of the chair, half-expecting to feel the warmth of her presence. Instead, there was only cold leather and colder grief. He turned away, his gaze falling upon a framed photograph on the mantle. The two of them at the Midsummer Festival, his own rare smile a mirror of her unrestrained joy.
That's when he heard it.
A sound so faint it was almost nothing. Beneath the floorboards, beneath the silence, a soft, rhythmic beat. Click-whir… click-whir…
It was not the house settling. It was the precise, patient sound of a clockwork mechanism. An incendiary device. His training took over, a cold wave washing away the grief. He scanned the room. Seconds. He had seconds. No time to search, no time to think. His hand shot out, grabbing the photograph from the mantle—the one piece of his past he could carry.
He dove for the bay window as the world behind him tore itself apart. The click-whir ended in a deafening, bass-heavy roar. The blast wave hit him like a physical fist, throwing him through the shattering glass. He landed hard on the manicured lawn, a shower of splinters and burning debris raining down around him. A searing, white-hot pain erupted on his forearm as a spatter of incendiary chemicals ignited his coat sleeve. He rolled frantically, beating the flames out with his good hand, the smell of burnt fabric and seared flesh filling his nostrils.
Pushing himself to his knees, he looked back. The house, their home, was a raging inferno, a funeral pyre for his old life. The Vultures hadn't just taken his future; they had just burned his past to the ground.
High in the heart of Aethelburg, where the city's pulse beat in the form of giant, groaning gears, a phantom tended to his wounds. The Crow's Nest, his secret garret in the St. Magnus Clock Tower, was a spartan chamber of stone and steel. Elias stood before a large slate wall, the raw, angry burn on his arm now cleaned and wrapped in stark white bandages.
The wall was a map of his rage. In the center, the Vultures' raven calling card was pinned like a black heart. A web of angry red strings connected it to everything he knew—a photo of Corbin, notes on the train heist, a charcoal sketch of Kestrel's brutal steam-gauntlets. It was the testament of a singular, burning purpose.
His old life was now nothing but ash and a single, smoke-stained photograph. His identity as a Cogwork agent was a cage he had to escape. On a nearby crate, a new identity was laid out. A long, heavy coat to hide his arsenal. A wide-brimmed hat to drown his face in shadow. A sturdy walking stick that hid a spring-loaded blade.
And a mask. Smooth, white, and utterly featureless, it was designed to erase a man and create a monster.
He was no longer Agent Elias Corvus. He was not even the man who had loved Elara. He was a ghost, an instrument of vengeance waiting to be unleashed. He reached out with his bandaged arm, his fingers hovering over the cold, porcelain surface of the mask. The hunt was about to begin.