Hyde Park, London.
After two relentless years of labour—years in which the clang of iron and the hiss of steam became the restless heartbeat of the Empire—the great marvel envisioned by Arthur Lionheart was at last complete.
Not merely constructed.
Perfected.
This Crystal Palace was no simple reconstruction of Paxton's original design. It was something far more daring—a palace shaped by art, guided by Arthur's mind, and raised through Britain's boundless industrial ambition. It was conceived not only to astonish its own century, but to defy the decay of time itself.
That morning, London awakened to a miracle.
The city unveiled one of its rare treasures—a flawless blue sky, clear enough to seem foreign to English soil. Sunlight fell upon Hyde Park like a divine benediction, glinting off the mosaic of glass panes that adorned the Palace's arches.
Crowds poured in from every district. The privileged made their way toward the gated inner enclosure, while the rest of London massed outside the perimeter like a living sea. The Royal Horse Guards, stern and glittering in their polished helmets, held back the tide with disciplined determination. Only royalty, foreign dignitaries, and the highest ranks of society were permitted inside.
At ten o'clock sharp, the royal carriage arrived. Cheers thundered through the park as Queen Victoria stepped out, her gloved hand resting lightly on Arthur Lionheart's arm.
She looked up.
And for a heartbeat—perhaps longer—her breath deserted her.
The Crystal Palace rose before her, transformed far beyond the world's familiar memory.
Five hundred metres of gleaming artistry—iron, glass, and imaginative geometry woven together in a harmony unseen in any architecture before it.
Arthur had insisted that the design must not slavishly imitate the past. Instead, it would be a rebirth.
The iron ribs were not mere structural supports but elegant arches—curved like the bow of a lyre, arranged in repeating sequences of musical grace. Between them, the glass panes were not uniform rectangles but a mosaic of varying proportions: tall, slender diamonds; curved petals; elongated hexagons that caught the sun at shifting angles, scattering prismatic colours across the grounds.
It was less a building than a vast cathedral of refracted light.
Yet its beauty concealed a quiet strength. Arthur's expression held a contemplative intensity as he surveyed the structure—an inward gaze, as if seeing not only the present moment but a threat far beyond the horizon of this century.
I won't let it happen like in the other timeline, he thought.
He remembered—too vividly—the tragic fate of the original Crystal Palace decades hence. The fire of 1936. A night when flames had consumed the glass titan the world had contemplated, leaving only twisted iron bones beneath a mournful sky.
Arthur had no intention of allowing such a catastrophe to stain the legacy of the Palace he had shaped with his own hands and heart.
He stepped closer to the central control of the Palace—the subtle, hydraulic levers, brass valves, and discreet piping embedded within the arches and floors. His eyes traced the elegant network, noting how each component had been carefully acquired, each system purchased and designed with foresight. As he observed the machinery, his mind traced the careful choices he had made: which materials to use, which channels to run, which mechanisms to employ, all conceived to fight fire before it could take hold. Every decision, every purchase, every sketch he had commissioned was now embodied in the silent, gleaming architecture around him.
To the world, it was a marvel of beauty. To Arthur, it was also a fortress against oblivion.
Victoria stood beside him, struck silent by the magnificence. Even a queen raised amid palaces found herself humbled.
Inside, the Palace revealed an even grander splendour.
Sunlight streamed through the artistic mosaic of glass, painting the marble floors with dancing spectra. The great elms of Hyde Park—preserved with reverence—rose like ancient guardians beneath the crystal roof, their leaves shimmering as though dusted in emerald fire.
The air held a serenity almost holy.
Foreign envoys, architects, and nobles followed behind the royal pair, each humbled despite themselves. Their carefully prepared speeches, their dignified reserve—vanished. All that remained were widened eyes and parted lips. Architects who believed they understood the boundaries of possibility now stared upward, struck by the quiet terror of realizing those boundaries had just been shattered.
Victoria's fingers tightened around Arthur's.
"It feels," she whispered, "as though we have stepped inside a dream."
Arthur smiled, turning his gaze toward the luminous vault above them.
"No, my dearest," he murmured. "This is not a dream. It is a promise."
He looked once more at the immense crystal vault—the palace he refused to let history erase.
A promise, he repeated silently to himself, that this time, it shall endure.
And together—queen and prince—they walked deeper into the shimmering paradise they had brought into existence, unaware that the world would remember this day not merely as an exhibition, but as the birth of a new age.