This morning in Braxmond it was hardly distinguishable from night. The smoke didn't thin with daylight; it simply changed color, turning from the deep charcoal of midnight to the ashen gray of dawn. Through the penthouse windows of our manor, I watched the city's industrial heart awaken with its familiar violence. The furnaces in the bowels of Kuznetsov Exhibition Hall roared to life below us, their voices joining the chorus of dozens of other smokestacks that lined the horizon like blackened fingers clawing at the sky. Each chimney exhaled its poisonous plume, the collective breath of Braxmond's industrial lung blotting out what little weak sunlight dared penetrate the perpetual haze.
The percussion of mallets against metal formed the city's pulse—relentless, unyielding, a rhythm that had beaten in my chest since birth. Even here, in our manor perched atop this colossal industrial complex, with its carefully manicured terraces bordering the exterior passages and fortified barriers designed specifically to muffle the factory din, we could not escape Braxmond's thundering core. The very walls seemed to vibrate with the city's mechanical heartbeat, each strike of hammer on anvil reverberating through brass pipes and iron beams until it reached our breakfast table.
During the morning meal, my father had already orchestrated his masterpiece—transforming the previous evening's grotesque spectacle into something far more palatable for public consumption. His associates at the various periodical vendors had received their carefully crafted statements before dawn broke over the smokestack horizon, their ink still wet when the first editions rolled off the printing presses. The official account—sanitized, refined, and thoroughly scrubbed of any mention of unhinged jaws, brass-tainted blood, or the worker's inhuman screams—now circulated through the gilded parlors and marble-columned establishments frequented by Braxmond's elite.
In the span of mere weeks since that horrific display, Lord Gregor had transformed a worker's nightmarish breakdown into a simple case of industrial fatigue. Expert testimonials from physicians whose loyalty had been purchased with coin appeared in the morning papers, accompanied by conveniently anonymous witnesses who swore under oath they'd seen nothing more than an exhausted man collapsing from the strain of building our magnificent airship. The select circles of the metropolis' upper class would breakfast on this sanitized version of truth, their delicate sensibilities protected from the raw horror that had actually unfolded on the factory's showroom floor. Father even managed to spin the airship reveal itself as an unqualified success, ensuring that none among the elite would dare suggest the nightmare was becoming a recurring theme. His growing expertise in this dark statecraft meant that even the faintest rumors of similar incidents in other workshops barely caused a ripple in polite society.
The grotesque incident had prompted Parliament to mandate a week's respite for all industrial workers—the first such decree issued by the sole seat controlled by the Mortal Instruments Order. Now, with Madam Asena's carnival arriving, our factories would stand idle, their furnaces cooling for the first time in living memory. The very thought of this unprecedented shutdown had Father seething over the smallest perceived slights, his jaw clenched as tightly as the brass gears in his pocket watch.
"Ridiculous, I say," Father announced between deliberate bites of honey-drizzled bread, each word measured and sharp. "The men worked too hard on the project, which is all there is to it. They're fortunate I am merciful enough not to fire the entire lot and hire fresh hands who understand the value of dedication."
"Exhaustion does not make a man's jaw unhinge, my dear," Mother recalled quietly while buttering her toast, then quickly caught herself, her voice faltering under his withering stare. "I mean, it truly explains what occurred, naturally."
"It does when mass hysteria seizes a gathering," he retorted, his tone carrying an icy rebuke that seemed to frost the very air between them. Yet his voice softened almost imperceptibly as soon as he noticed my eyes upon him, the calculating politician in him never forgetting his audience. "Perception shapes memory, Rhylorin. Those who witnessed madness will believe in madness. Those who suspected sabotage will cling to theories of sabotage. It is our responsibility—our duty—to ensure they remember only exhaustion."
He dabbed his lips with a crisp linen napkin, the fabric pristine white against his perpetually soot-stained fingers. His steel-gray eyes had already shifted into that distant, calculating expression I knew all too well—the look that meant he was rehearsing speeches in his mind, weighing each syllable for maximum political impact. I could practically see the gears turning behind his weathered, smoke-darkened face as he constructed the narrative that would satisfy both the city's elite and the restless masses below.
For him, the increasingly strange incidents plaguing our factories were not harbingers of some deeper horror unfolding across the city—not the twisted metal screaming to life in the foundries, not the worker's jaw distending beyond any human possibility, not the way the very air had seemed to thicken with malevolent purpose during the airship demonstration. They were merely political inconveniences, obstacles to be hammered into proper shape through sheer force of will and carefully crafted lies. The worker's agony, his inhuman transformation, had already been filed away in Father's methodical mind as acceptable collateral damage in the grand machinery of Kuznetsov Industries.
But across our polished breakfast table, Mother's gaze lingered on me with quiet understanding. She poured steaming tea into my cup, her hand remaining perfectly steady despite Father's thunderous pronouncements. Her golden hair caught what little light filtered through the smoke-stained windows, creating a rare patch of warmth in our world of perpetual coal-dust and shadow.
"Smoke always hides fire," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper as she glanced meaningfully in my direction. Her clear blue eyes met mine with quiet certainty, and in their depths I felt the truth of her words resonate more powerfully than all of Father's carefully constructed speeches combined.
He dismissed her observation with a contemptuous wave of his hand and returned his attention to his breakfast, already moving on to the next item in his mental agenda.
I lifted the cup she had poured and sipped carefully. The tea tasted of cloves and something sharper—an herbal blend that clung to my tongue like half-remembered dreams. She always added her family's traditional herbs to ward off the effects of breathing smoke, old remedies passed down through generations of her bloodline. "Little folk magic," Father would scoff whenever he noticed her preparations. But the gentle warmth soothed something deep within me that his forceful words could never reach.
I said nothing aloud, allowing the silence to stretch between us like morning fog. My dreams had been haunting my waking hours as of late, but strangely, they were no longer dominated by the terrifying shadow figure that had plagued my sleep for months. Instead, Ayla had flooded my mind with visions both beautiful and mysterious. Sometimes, in the twilight moments between sleep and consciousness, I would glimpse her wandering through landscapes that seemed impossibly distant from Braxmond's industrial wasteland—rolling green hills stretching endlessly toward horizons unmarked by smokestacks, bathed in the golden warmth of eternal summer days. At the peak of the largest mount stood a solitary cherry blossom tree, its pale pink petals drifting on warm breezes, and there she would be, always just beyond my reach, never seeming to notice my presence in these ethereal visions.