The moon hung low over Steelhaven like a swollen, watchful eye.
It was impossibly close tonight—so close that its cratered surface was visible to the naked eye, a pockmarked sphere of bone-white light that seemed to scrape against the uppermost smokestacks of the city's foundries. The astronomers at the Aetherspire Observatory would later call it a "lunar perigee," a rare celestial alignment that occurred perhaps once every decade. But to the citizens of Steelhaven, crowded into their soot-stained streets and huddled in their cramped tenements, it looked like something else entirely: a god leaning down to inspect the works of ants.
The moonlight spilled across the city in sheets of silver, cutting through the ever-present smog like a knife through oil. It painted the corrugated iron roofs in shades of mercury and ghost-pale blue. It caught the steam venting from a thousand chimneys and turned it into writhing phantoms that drifted across the night sky. It illuminated the skeletal frameworks of half-built factories on the city's edge, their exposed girders and unfinished walls casting jagged, claw-like shadows across the cobblestones.
Steelhaven did not sleep. It could not afford to.
The streets were alive with the rhythm of industry and survival. Steam-wagons rumbled down the main thoroughfares—Ironhide Boulevard, Gearwright Avenue, the broad expanse of Foundry Road—their engines hissing and clanking, their headlamps cutting cones of yellow light through the smog. They moved in steady processions, hauling cargo, transporting late-shift workers, ferrying the well-to-do from one district to another in enclosed cabins lined with velvet and polished brass. The cheaper wagons, their paint peeling and their engines wheezing, rattled past with open beds packed with laborers whose faces were masks of exhaustion, their clothes stiff with dried sweat and coal dust.
Pedestrians filled the sidewalks—a river of humanity flowing past shop fronts, street vendors, and the occasional Cog-Watcher patrol. A factory worker in oil-stained coveralls trudged past a pair of well-dressed merchants arguing over a contract, their voices lost in the cacophony. A woman in a tattered shawl pushed a cart laden with scrap metal, her eyes fixed on the ground, her back bent under the weight. A child, no more than eight, stood on a corner hawking newspapers, his voice shrill and desperate: "Iron Triumph saved! King lives! Read all about it! Only two copper!"
The air was thick Oppressively so a choking blend of coal smoke, hot metal, and the acrid bite of chemicals vented from the nearby tanneries and dye-works. Beneath it all was the smell of the city itself: unwashed bodies, rotting garbage piled in alleys, the sharp tang of machine oil, and the faint, sickly-sweet stench of the Ashflow River that cut through the industrial heart of Steelhaven like an infected wound.
But tonight, there was something else in the air. Something that made even the most hardened dock-worker glance up at that swollen moon and feel a prickling unease at the base of their skull. The city had been wounded. The coup had failed, yes, but the scars were fresh. Bloodstains still marked the plaza cobblestones despite the Cog-Watchers' efforts to scrub them clean. Rumors moved through the crowds like a plague: whispers of assassins still at large, of nobles who couldn't be trusted, of a conspiracy that reached higher than anyone dared say aloud.
Yet the city ground on. Because that was what Steelhaven did. It ground on
At the southern edge of the city, where the industrial sprawl finally gave way to something almost resembling nature, lay Mirrorfen Lake.
It was not a natural formation. Two centuries ago, it had been a quarry—a brutal, open wound carved into the earth to feed the Republic's hunger for stone. When the quarry was finally exhausted, the rains came, and over the decades, it had filled with runoff from the surrounding hills, creating a body of water that was now over a mile across at its widest point.
Tonight, under the swollen moon, Mirrorfen Lake was a sheet of liquid silver.
The water was still—unnaturally so—its surface reflecting the moonlight with such perfect clarity that it looked less like water and more like a mirror laid flat against the earth, a window into some inverted world where the sky was below and the ground above. The reflection of the moon sat at the lake's center, a second, ghostly twin to the celestial body overhead, its light rippling faintly whenever the gentlest breeze disturbed the surface.
Around the lake's edge, the city's character changed. The buildings here were older, shorter, made of weathered brick and timber rather than the industrial iron and steel of the inner districts. Gas lamps lined the promenade, their flames enclosed in glass globes that cast warm, golden circles of light onto the cobblestone walkway. Trees, their leaves dark and heavy—grew in carefully tended rows, their branches arching over the path to form a canopy that filtered the moonlight into dappled patterns.
The air here was different, too. Cleaner. The wind off the water carried the scent of damp stone and algae, cutting through the city's usual reek of smoke and oil. It was a place where the well-to-do came to pretend, if only for an evening, that they lived somewhere other than Steelhaven. Where young lovers strolled arm-in-arm, and families brought their children to feed stale bread to the few remaining ducks that had somehow survived the city's relentless expansion.
And tonight, on the lake's eastern shore, the air was filled with music, laughter, and the smell of fried dough and spun sugar.
The Moonfall Carnival had arrived three days prior, setting up on a stretch of open ground that the city had grudgingly designated as "public recreation space"—a patch of trampled grass and hard-packed dirt that served as everything from a market fairground to an execution site, depending on the week.
Tonight, it was a wonderland of controlled chaos.
The carnival's main tent was a towering structure of canvas dyed in broad stripes of crimson and gold, its peaked roof crowned with a pennant that snapped and fluttered in the breeze. Surrounding it were smaller tents and stalls, their awnings painted with garish advertisements: "Madame Seraph's Fortunes Told!" "The World's Strongest Man!" "See the Feathered Serpent—Alive!" Strings of colored paper lanterns crisscrossed the pathways, glowing like captive stars, their light reflecting off the brass fittings of the carnival's steam-powered rides—a rickety Ferris wheel that groaned and hissed as it turned, a carousel of mechanical horses whose painted eyes gleamed with an unsettling lifelike quality.
The crowd was thick—families, couples, gangs of rowdy factory workers still in their stained uniforms, children darting between legs and screaming with the unrestrained joy of those too young to understand the weight of the world. The noise was a living thing: calliope music piped from a wheezing steam-organ, barkers shouting their pitches, the laughter and shrieks of patrons on the rides, the sizzle and pop of food frying in great iron skillets.
Near the entrance, a clown stood on a raised platform, his face painted in exaggerated whites and reds, his costume a patchwork of mismatched fabrics that had seen better days. He held a bouquet of flowers—chrysanthemums, their petals the color of old bruises, purple and sickly yellow. He scanned the crowd with eyes that were a little too sharp, a little too knowing, until they landed on a small boy clutching his mother's hand.
"You there, young sir!" the clown called, his voice high and theatrical. He bounded down from the platform with an exaggerated flourish, landing in a crouch before the boy. The child stared, wide-eyed, caught between delight and unease.
The clown produced a single chrysanthemum from his bouquet with a magician's sleight of hand, presenting it to the boy with a deep, sweeping bow. "For you, brave knight of Steelhaven! May it bring you joy in these troubled times!"
The boy took the flower hesitantly, his small fingers closing around the stem. His mother smiled, murmured a thank-you, and pulled her son along. The clown straightened, his painted grin never faltering, though his eyes followed the pair for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then he turned back to the crowd, already scanning for his next mark.
Further into the carnival, near a tent whose sign promised "Wonders of the Aetheric Arts," a magician held court. He was a tall, thin man in a tattered black coat and a top hat that had lost most of its sheen. His hands moved with a fluid, hypnotic grace as he held up a seemingly ordinary deck of cards, fanning them out before his audience—a semi-circle of a dozen onlookers, some skeptical, some genuinely enthralled.
"Pick a card, any card," he intoned, his voice smooth and practiced. A young woman stepped forward, selected one, and showed it to the crowd—the Ace of Cogs, a card unique to the Republic's suits. The magician didn't even look. He snapped his fingers, and the card in her hand shimmered, its face changing to the King of Hammers. Gasps rippled through the crowd. He snapped again, and the card burst into a brief, harmless flame before disintegrating into ash that drifted to the ground like black snow.
Applause. A few coins tossed into the hat at his feet. The magician bowed, his grin wide, though his eyes, like the clown's, held something sharper—an awareness, perhaps, that magic in Steelhaven was never just tricks and mirrors.
At a nearby food stall, a bearded, bald man with forearms like steel girders worked a massive cast-iron griddle. The air around his stall was thick with the smell of frying batter, caramelized sugar, and something else—something warm and faintly spiced that cut through the usual carnival fare. His sign, hand-painted on a warped plank of wood, read: "GRUNFELD'S IRON CRISPS – A Taste of Home."
The Iron Crisps themselves were simple but devastatingly effective: thin sheets of batter, fried until they were golden and brittle, then rolled into tight spirals while still hot. Grunfeld would dust them with a mixture of cinnamon and a ground spice he claimed was "imported from the Rust-Coast"—though most suspected it was just black pepper and wishful thinking. The result was something that cracked between the teeth with a satisfying snap, releasing a burst of sweetness followed by a subtle, warming heat that lingered on the tongue.
"Two copper for a cone, three for a double!" Grunfeld barked, his voice cutting through the din. A line had formed—mothers buying treats for sticky-fingered children, young couples sharing a single cone, a dock-worker with his shirt unbuttoned eating his third helping and grinning like he'd found paradise.
The smell was intoxicating—the sugar, the spice, the hot fat—and it mingled with the scents of roasted nuts from a neighboring stall, the tang of pickled vegetables from another, and the ever-present undertone of lake water and coal smoke that defined even this pocket of attempted cheer.
Away from the noise and light of the carnival, along the quieter stretch of the promenade where the gas lamps were spaced further apart and the trees grew thick, there was a bench.
It was old, the wood worn smooth by years of use, the iron armrests flecked with rust. It faced the lake, offering an unobstructed view of the water and the swollen moon reflected in its surface. The path here was nearly deserted—most of the evening's crowds were drawn to the carnival's noise and lights.
But this bench was occupied.
A man and a woman sat close together, their bodies turned toward one another, the space between them charged with an intimacy that made them oblivious to the world.
The man was perhaps in his mid-twenties, dressed in the practical, worn clothes of a tradesman—canvas trousers, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a leather vest. His hands were calloused, the nails edged with grime that spoke of honest labor. The woman was younger, her hair pinned back in a simple style, her dress plain but clean, the kind worn by a shop girl or a seamstress. She had a small, woven shawl draped over her shoulders against the evening chill.
They were kissing.
It was not a chaste, tentative thing. It was a kiss that spoke of need, of the kind of hunger that comes from not knowing if tomorrow will ever come. His hand was at the back of her neck, fingers tangled in the loose strands of her hair that had escaped their pins. Her hands gripped the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, as if the few inches of air between them were an unbearable distance.
The moonlight painted them in silver, casting their shadows long and intertwined against the cobblestones. The world narrowed to the press of lips, the warmth of shared breath, the faint, desperate sound of a sigh caught between them. Her shawl slipped from her shoulders, forgotten. His other hand found hers, their fingers interlacing tightly, as if they were each the other's anchor against the chaos of the city that surrounded them.
When they finally broke apart, it was only by inches. They stayed close, foreheads pressed together, eyes closed, breathing in sync. The lake stretched out before them, vast and still, the moon's reflection rippling faintly in the water. The distant sound of the carnival—laughter, music, the grinding of gears—was a muted backdrop, a reminder of the world they had temporarily escaped.
"I don't want to go back," she whispered, her voice so soft it was almost lost in the gentle lap of water against the shore.
"Then we won't," he replied, though they both knew it was a lie. The city did not let go of its children so easily.
But for now, on this bench, under this impossible moon, they pretended. They held each other, and for a few stolen moments, they were safe.