The telegram arrived on a Tuesday, which Lysander would later recognize as grimly appropriate—Tuesday, ruled by Mars, planet of conflict and sudden change. The paper felt heavier than it should have, as if the words themselves carried physical weight.
Mother deceased. Presence required. Ashworth Estate.
Three sentences that unraveled twenty-three years of carefully constructed distance.
Lysander's fingers trembled as he set down his sketch pencil, leaving his architectural draft of the new municipal building half-finished. The rational part of his mind—the part that believed in measurements, angles, and the solid reliability of stone and steel—whispered that he should feel something. Grief, perhaps. Or at least surprise.
But Eliza Ashworth had been a ghost long before death made it official.
The carriage ride to Greycliff took him through London's transformation from daylight respectability to gaslit ambiguity. Fog crept between buildings like searching fingers, and Lysander found himself pressing closer to the window, watching the city blur into suggestions of itself. Street lamps became will-o'-wisps. Pedestrians dissolved into shadow-play.
'When did London become so... fluid?' he wondered, though part of him suspected it had always been this way. He'd simply chosen not to see.
Ashworth Estate squatted on Grimoire Row like a tomb made mansion, all Gothic towers and grotesque gargoyles. Lysander hadn't seen it since the age of six, when Father had proclaimed that "the boy needs practical education, not his mother's fantasies." Yet standing before its iron gates, he felt muscle memory guiding his hand to the exact stone that would trigger the entrance mechanism.
Click.
The gates swung open with well-oiled silence.
Inside, dust motes danced in shafts of dying light, and Lysander realized with a start that they moved in patterns—spirals and symbols that teased the edge of recognition before dissolving. The family solicitor, Mr. Blackwood, waited in the study, his pinched face suggesting chronic disapproval of existence itself.
"Mr. Ashworth." Blackwood's voice could have desiccated flowers. "Your mother's will is... unconventional."
Lysander settled into a leather chair that groaned with age. "When was she ever conventional?"
"Indeed." Blackwood produced a mahogany box from behind the desk, setting it down with excessive care. "She left everything to you, naturally. The estate, the accounts, and... this. Her most treasured possession, according to the will."
The box was unremarkable—no carved symbols, no ornate locks, nothing to suggest its contents were anything more than jewelry or letters. Yet as Lysander reached for it, the air grew dense, as if reality itself held its breath.
Inside, wrapped in midnight blue velvet, lay a deck of cards.
But calling them mere cards was like calling the Thames mere water. Each one thrummed with subtle energy, their backs decorated with impossibly intricate patterns that seemed to shift when observed directly. The top card bore an image that made Lysander's throat constrict: a figure shrouded in shadows, hands extended as if offering or taking, with eyes that weren't quite human.
"The Symbolum Mortis," Blackwood whispered, and Lysander heard fear crack the man's professional composure. "Your mother insisted you be given them immediately upon her death. She also left... instructions."
The solicitor handed over a sealed envelope. Mother's handwriting flowed across the front: For Lysander, when the world reveals its true face.
As Lysander broke the seal, he felt something fundamental shift. The study's shadows deepened. The tick of the grandfather clock became irregular, as if time itself stuttered. And from somewhere—above, below, or perhaps from within the walls themselves—came a sound like cards being shuffled by invisible hands.
The letter was brief:
My darling son,
By the time you read this, the protections I placed upon you will have begun to fade. You will see things—true things—that your father's world tried to hide. The cards are your birthright and your burden. Learn their language quickly, for the Collectors grow bold, and the Arcanum Society stirs.
Trust no one fully. Reality is negotiable, but every negotiation has a price.
Remember: We do not read the cards. We read the spaces between them.
Your loving mother, Eliza
P.S. The Shadow Card chooses its moment. When it does, do not fight it.
Lysander looked up from the letter to find Blackwood had retreated to the farthest corner of the room. "There's one more thing," the solicitor stammered. "Your mother... she insisted I tell you. Check your reflection. Use the gilt mirror, specifically."
The mirror in question hung between two bookcases, its frame a baroque tangle of silver vines and thorns. Lysander approached slowly, some primitive instinct warning against sudden movements. His reflection stared back—pale skin, dark hair falling across grey eyes, the sharp Ashworth cheekbones that photograph so well and love so poorly.
Then the reflection blinked first.
It smiled—a expression Lysander's own face wasn't making—and raised its hand. Between its fingers appeared a card, The Fool, reversed. When Lysander glanced down, he found the same card somehow in his own hand, though he hadn't touched the deck.
"Welcome home," his reflection mouthed silently. "The game begins anew."
The card in Lysander's hand grew warm, then hot. Symbols crawled across its surface like living things, and he understood with terrible clarity that his carefully ordered world of blueprints and building codes had been nothing but a comfortable lie.
Reality had revealed its true face, and it was wearing his own.
As if in response to his recognition, the estate shuddered. Not physically—the walls remained solid, the floor steady—but something deeper shifted. Colors became more saturated. Shadows gained depth that suggested hidden dimensions. And from the deck still nestled in its box came a sound like a heartbeat, or perhaps like something vast and patient finally beginning to wake.
Lysander Ashworth, architect of the rational and builder of the solid, closed his eyes and surrendered to his inheritance.
When he opened them again, London would never look the same.