The fog outside clung to the windows like a hungry ghost, smearing the glass in a grey sheen. Inside the headquarters of The Order of the Watchful Flame, the air was thick with pipe smoke and colder than it had any right to be. Long coats dripped from the shoulders of men too proud to wear scarves, and the fireplace roared more out of ceremony than warmth.
Maps lined the walls—maps of cities, coasts, and things with no names at all. Pins dotted them like scars. The crest of the Order—a flaming eye over a scroll—loomed above the mantle, painted in bold crimson strokes as if it bled.
And at the center of this quiet storm, Lysander Vale leaned across a long oak table, the firelight glinting off his spectacles, breath visible in short flares.
He was in mid-flight—voice raised, accent sharp as a butcher's cleaver.
"I'm saying your theory has more holes than a widow's stockings, Wilkes! Three bodies, all drained of blood, and you chalk it up to a madman with a grudge? Please."
Detective Charles Wilkes—grey of beard and thicker in the middle than his coat allowed—bristled. "It is a madman. You think vampires are roaming Whitechapel now?"
Lysander snorted. "Not vampires. Just clever bastards with a taste for theatrics. Which, granted, makes them smarter than you."
Gasps flared like match heads around the table.
Wilkes stood. "You cheeky little worm—"
And then came the fist.
Lysander's.
Straight into Wilkes' jaw with the force of someone who'd been waiting all week for an excuse.
The room erupted.
Wilkes reeled back with a grunt, then—bless the stubbornness of elder men—lunged forward and socked Lysander across the temple. Papers flew. A chair tipped. One poor scribe screamed.
"Enough!" someone barked from the doorway.
But not before Wilkes, red in the face and bleeding from the lip, wheezed:
"Show some blasted respect, boy!"
Lysander wiped his mouth with his sleeve, straightened his collar, and replied with a lopsided grin.
"Respect's earned, old man. You keep shouting nonsense in maps and calling it police work, I'll keep calling you names."
A ticking clock was the only thing that dared breathe.
Inspector Edmund Grady, head of this quarter of The Order, sat beneath a portrait of Queen Victoria in mourning black. The room smelled of old wood and old judgment. Papers lay in neat stacks, untouched, like a priest's Bible—kept for show.
Across from him, Lysander slouched, an icepack pressed to his temple, his pipe trailing smoke into a beam of watery light. One boot tapped impatiently against the rug, just enough to irritate.
"Don't speak," Grady said at last, voice like boiled gravel. "I've heard what happened."
Lysander opened his mouth anyway.
"Don't. Speak."
He closed it. Smirked.
Grady sighed, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. "You punched Wilkes."
"I did."
"You do realise he's been with the Order since the Crimean War?"
"He's also been wrong since the Crimean War," Lysander muttered.
Grady ignored it. "You're being reassigned."
That straightened Lysander's spine. "To where?"
"Brighton."
Lysander blinked. "The sea-ridden retirement home of England?"
"There's been… an incident."
Grady opened a folder and slid a black-and-white photograph across the desk. It showed a young girl, no older than twenty, pale as wax and wrapped in wool. Her eyes were wide. Haunted.
"She was found in the woods—Stanmer Park, just north of the town. Filipino, frostbitten, near dead. Says she doesn't know how she got there."
Lysander leaned forward. "Filipino? In Brighton?"
"In the middle of December. Yes."
"She walk here from Manila?"
Grady didn't smile. "She speaks little English. Screams in her sleep. Mentions names no one can place."
"And you're sending me why?"
Grady folded his hands. "You're the youngest on our roster. She might talk to someone closer to her age."
Lysander scoffed. "Oh, splendid. I'm to be the designated baby whisperer now."
Grady's eyes narrowed. "You're also being punished. For the punch. You'll be travelling… modestly."
Lysander raised an eyebrow. "Train?"
Grady grinned. It was not pleasant. "Carriage. With the, ah, less privileged."
Lysander groaned. "So hobos."
"Beg your pardon—citizens in flux. Think of it as penance. Feel the weight of your own fist."
Lysander puffed his pipe, blew smoke toward the chandelier. "And what if I throw one of them out the window for snoring too loudly?"
"Then you'll ride the rest of the way on foot."
A beat.
Then, through the smoke, Lysander smirked. "well then, I guess I'm going home."
The carriage creaked like the knees of an old maid with every reluctant turn of its wooden wheels. England, that grumpy old island, lay under a white quilt of frost, fields and hedgerows dusted like ghost towns in mourning.
Inside the carriage: mud, breath, and bodies.
Lysander sat hunched in the farthest corner, coat collar upturned like a barricade against reality. He wore his scarf the way one wore a noose—tight, irritated, and only half-willing. A pipe clung to his lip, the smoke curling like thoughts he couldn't quite form yet. His gloved fingers drummed absently against the wooden slats.
Across from him sat six others, rough men with faces carved by misfortune and fingers blackened by cold. One had a bandaged eye. Another wore shoes that belonged to two different centuries.
And yet, somehow, they sang.
It started with the harmonica—a wheezing, soulful note that hung in the air like fog. The man playing it, a wiry thing with a crooked spine and sorrow in his fingers, played like he was whispering to ghosts.
Then the others joined in, voices low, cracked, but not off-key. The lyrics were ancient, some tragic old sailor's song about drowning one's regrets in gin and sea salt.
> "Oh the tide took Mary, the frost took James,
And the gin took what little hope remains…"
Lysander's brow twitched. He shifted in his seat. The song clawed at his eardrums like a cat with abandonment issues.
> "So I drank to the Queen and I drank to the war,
And I woke up not knowing what for…"
The harmonica man leaned into the crescendo.
Lysander's pipe hit the floor.
He stood.
In one fluid, silent motion, he reached over, snatched the harmonica, and tossed it out the window. It vanished into the snow with a single pitiful wheeze.
Silence.
Even the wind paused.
The singers stared, stunned.
Lysander looked them over, eyes narrowed, smoke curling from his nostrils like a mildly annoyed dragon.
"Gentlemen," he drawled. "I am already being exiled to the most depressing corner of this bleak nation in a box on wheels with seven unpaid extras from a Charles Dickens novel. Must we also summon the soundtrack to a tragic Shakespearean suicide?"
He sat.
The pipe returned to his lips.
Someone coughed. Another tried not to laugh.
The bandaged man muttered, "Bloody hell…"
Lysander blew smoke at the ceiling and closed his eyes. "Wake me when Brighton looks less like purgatory."
And the carriage rolled on, wheels groaning under the weight of weather, weariness, and one insufferably dramatic detective with no tolerance for harmonicas.
The carriage groaned on, rolling through the frostbitten veins of Sussex. Snowflakes tapped the windowpanes like persistent secrets, eager to be let in. Inside, the silence had grown thick, the kind that only exists after music has died an unnatural death.
Lysander lay sprawled across the bench, coat open now, pipe long since gone cold. The thin light of afternoon crept in through the cracked shutters, casting shadows like prison bars across his face.
His eyes, once closed, now stared blankly at the ceiling—thinking. Or at least attempting to.
> A Filipino girl found half-dead in the snow… in Brighton, of all places. Doesn't remember how she got there. Doesn't remember anything at all. Frostbite kissing at her toes and lies hiding behind her lips. The brass says I'm the youngest, says she'll open up to someone 'less crusty.'
He scoffed inwardly.
> They forget: young men can carry sharper knives than old ones.
He shifted, watching the smoke-stained ceiling blur and sharpen as the carriage rocked.
> Strange case, this one. Smells like wet tobacco and cover-ups. And why Brighton? It's never Brighton. It's always bloody London. Brighton is for sea-washed boredom and old men dying politely in their sleep. Not half-frozen girls falling out of the trees.
His fingers tapped a silent rhythm against his chest, the tempo of a hunch he couldn't quite place yet.
> I've got a bad feeling. The kind that tastes like copper and sounds like a name I haven't heard in years.
Just then—a wheeze.
A note.
A... harmonica.
Lysander's eye twitched.
He sat up slowly, like the dead rising from a nap they didn't agree to. Across from him, the same haggard group avoided his gaze. Except one.
The bandaged man. He grinned with two teeth and a mouth full of mischief, holding a second harmonica like it was a holy relic passed down by his tone-deaf ancestors.
Another note.
Longer this time.
Lysander stared at him, eyes wide, disbelief thick on his tongue.
"…You have got to be shitting me."
The clack of boots echoed sharply against the damp stone as Lysander walked beside Detective Brooks, posture stiff and arms folded behind him. Brighton's sea breeze whipped at the coattails of his long black trench, which contrasted Brooks' more casual beige coat and smug smile.
"Still carrying yourself like a funeral procession, Xander," Brooks said, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning the street with a grin.
Lysander didn't bother replying at first. His sharp green eyes were focused ahead. "You're only Chief because of Uncle Timothy. Don't let the hat fool you, you're still the same runt who cried when someone ate his apple."
Brooks chuckled, adjusting the old English cap on his head like a magician preparing a trick. "Nepotism or not, I run Brighton now. Try to smile. Maybe even enjoy the scent of seaweed and soggy fish n' chips."
They turned into a narrow alleyway between an old bakery and a boarded-up bookshop. Faded graffiti and bricks of all shades greeted them. Brooks slowed, stepping three paces from the wall's midpoint. He squatted, picked up a loose brick nearby, and slid it into a vacant spot low on the wall.
Lysander raised an eyebrow. "Of course. A detective agency's front door hidden by DIY Jenga. Brilliant."
Brooks ignored the sarcasm, tapping the brick gently. The wall rumbled faintly. A slit opened in the stone, revealing a narrow pathway lit by humming gas lamps.
"Very discreet," Lysander muttered.
"You always say that."
They stepped through.
Inside, chaos reigned in an organized sort of way. People zipped past, some holding glowing scrolls, others mid-conversation with projections that flickered and shifted dialects by the second. An agent vanished into thin air in one corner, only to reappear moments later, older by at least a few hours.
"Busy as usual," Brooks said, nodding at a passing agent who saluted and called out, "Chief."
Lysander scowled. "Don't let that title go to your head."
"You're just jealous I got the nice office."
Brooks gestured toward a junior officer, signaling with two fingers. "Take him to the lass."
Elena sat quietly on a cushioned bench, fingers laced neatly in her lap. Her black hair, wavy and elegant, caught the warm lamplight. Dressed in a sleek navy coat too thin for the cold, she looked almost fragile against the concrete surroundings — but her eyes, sharp and curious, betrayed her strength.
She looked up as Lysander entered.
For a moment, their gazes met. His forest green eyes narrowed with interest; hers, dark as ink, flicked to his coat, his stance, his frown.
"You're the…?"
She tilted her head, blinked slowly. Said nothing.
He sighed, lowering into the chair across from her. "I'll ask plainly. Name?"
She blinked again. "What?"
"Where are you from? Who brought you here? And how did you end up near Stammer Woods?"
She feigned confusion, then turned her head to the side as if she didn't understand English.
His eye twitched. Then, without changing expression, he switched languages — fluidly speaking to her in Filipino.
She blinked, stunned. A beat passed before she dropped the act.
"I speak English," she admitted in a soft, even voice. "Quite fluently, actually. My parents insisted on it growing up."
"Then why pretend you didn't?"
"Because this is all incredibly weird. I was surrounded by strangers in winter coats and hats, none of whom seemed to understand personal space. I needed a moment."
Lysander breathed out slowly, dragging a hand down his face. "You're making this difficult."
"You haven't even told me where I am."
He stood, motioned for her to follow. "Walk with me."
As they walked, Elena glanced around at the absurdly dressed agents, murmuring questions that he half-heartedly ignored.
"What is this place, anyway?"
"A building."
"Are those clocks floating?"
"Yes."
"Do all the women wear goggles like that?"
"No, just the ones who like explosions."
They entered a large chamber filled with glowing tubes and rotating gears, like a steampunk command center. A young Black woman with high cheekbones and striking orange glasses looked up from her console — Delphine.
"Delphine. I need a favor."
She raised an eyebrow. "Don't you always? What is it this time.?"
He gestured toward Elena. "She's not from around here, find out where or dear I say when."
Delphine froze. "That… sounds illegal."
He leaned closer. "I need you to check the travel logs. Specifically, any tickets used from the Philippines… to Stammer Woods. Cross-reference the last seventy years."
Delphine gave him a flat look. "Lysander. You and I both know ticket travel across time was abolished decades ago. The entire concept is archaic."
"Humor me."
With a grumble, she tapped at her console. The gears churned. Scrolls spun open. A faint hum echoed as time data was scanned.
Then — beep.
She stopped.
"Well?"
Delphine stared at the screen. "...There was a ticket."
Lysander straightened.
"Used to enter Stammer Woods," she continued, voice slowly shifting into disbelief. "But… the origin point is null."
Elena frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Lysander said slowly, "the ticket came from a time that doesn't exist yet."
Delphine's eyes widened. "Vale..."
At that exact moment, Elena gasped quietly, her mind racing. The green eyes. The distant yet impulsive tone. That sharp jaw, quiet madness and ever sharp mind.
She whispered it.
"...Lysander?"
They both turned.
He looked back at her with a single raised brow, head slightly tilted — a mix of curiosity and recognition… but not surprise.
Delphine echoed, louder this time, "...Lysander."
And with the quiet tick of a nearby clock, the curtains closed — just as the three stood frozen in the moment, suspended between mystery and memory.