Élise de la Serre gripped the leather strap as the carriage lurched over Geneva's rutted dirt tracks, each jolt jarring her teeth and churning her stomach like bad wine. Paris's cobbles had been a lady's penance, polished smooth for powdered wigs and whispered intrigues; here, the mud sucked at the wheels, flinging clods against the panels, the air thick with damp earth and the faint rot of winter's leavings.
To her left, her father sat comfortably in the lantern's warm glow, the pages of his leather-bound tome rustling softly with each sway of the carriage. Across from them loomed Frederick Weatherall, her combat trainer, his broad English frame crammed into the bench like a mastiff in a kennel, arms folded over a chest scarred from too many honest brawls. The man's face was a map of old grudges—bushy brows furrowed, mustache twitching as he stared out at the endless Bavarian murk.
She looked at her father, the words tumbling out before the next rut could choke them back. "I don't know how you can read with all this movement. I feel I would be sick if I tried."
He gave a small chuckle, marking his place with a gloved finger, his eyes—kind but ever-calculating—meeting hers with that familiar mix of amusement and quiet steel. "Ma fille, I'm sure you could do it if you put your mind to it. The world's storms pass quicker when you find an anchor in the page."
Weatherall grunted, breaking his silence like a stone cracking ice. "Books won't save you from a blade, m'lord. Nor from whatever Frankenstein's brewing in that rat-hole of his."
Élise latched on to the new direction of the conversation, her gray eyes sharpening like a whetstone on steel. "Who is Frankenstein, Father? I know you said he's a Templar, but you didn't say why we're going to his estate or why I'm here with you."
The Grand Master closed his book with an almost disappointed look on his face, the leather cover snapping shut like a door on unfinished thoughts, his fingers lingering on the spine as if reluctant to surrender the page's refuge. The lantern's glow caught the lines of fatigue around his eyes, deepening the shadows that duty had carved there over years of balancing the Rite's fragile scales. "Dr. Victor Frankenstein is the Order's foremost expert in the artifacts of Those Who Came Before. He has spent all his life researching and tracking down everything he could—tombs, shards, the very echoes of their will. We are going to his estate because he spent the last few years requesting more and more information from our Rite on them. We have given it to him each time, with the caveat that he share what he learns. He has yet to share anything. I have sent him many missives over the last year, and yet... nothing. We are going to get some answers." François paused, his voice dropping to that measured timbre he used for council edicts, paternal warmth threading through like a hidden blade. "You are coming along as Victor has a son, William, who is around your age—thirteen, turning fourteen soon—and he is being groomed as you are to join the Order. It will do you some good to meet another initiate your own age."
Élise felt a thrill of excitement rush up her spine, electric as a thunderstike. She so rarely got to interact with others her age, let alone those who might match her wits without stumbling over the basics. Being around Arno was fun—he was like a little brother, trailing after her into the next orchard scrape or tower climb, his laughter a bright spark in the château's gloom—but he wasn't an equal, not yet, his mind quick with mischief but adrift in any overly deep learning. Perhaps if she made more of an effort to draw him into the Order's way of thinking—like her father had continuously pestered her to—he might sharpen that blade of curiosity into something lasting.
She glanced at Weatherall, the instructor's blunt face set like weathered oak, his own lessons more bruise than philosophy.
Or perhaps not.
With this William, son to a man of academia like Victor, she could only hope for a true sparring partner, someone to match her speed without tripping on over their own feet.
They returned to the comfortable silence, and she listened to the carriage as it made its way on the track, the creak of axles and muffled hoofbeats a dull lullaby. Her father reopened his book and continued his reading, the pages turning with soft whispers. Weatherall started to nap, his snores rumbling like distant thunder.
It was an hour or two later—just as Élise's eyes started to grow heavy—when she felt the ground the carriage rolled along change to a more sturdy surface, the jolts smoothing to a steady rumble.
She moved to the curtain and spotted their destination: Geneva, the proud republic huddled by the lake's edge, its walls a gray bulwark against Savoy's old shadows. In this tense winter of 1782, the city of 20,000 souls thrummed with watchmakers' precision and Protestant piety, cobbled streets lined with half-timbered houses and spires piercing the fog.
Élise had done some research about the city when her father had said they were headed here. She found a bit about the history of the city—a Protestant stronghold since John Calvin's reforms in the 1530s, shaking off Savoy's yoke in 1535 to join the Swiss Confederation, its walls rebuilt in the 1540s against Catholic incursions, and a haven for Huguenots fleeing French persecution, swelling its artisan guilds with clockmakers and jewelers whose gears ticked like the republic's unyielding independence. But what she was more focused on was the current political landscape, a powder keg of oligarchic rule where the General Council—dominated by fifteen hundred wealthy burghers—hoarded power from the five thousand "natives" and "habitants" below them, the Négatifs aristocrats clashing with the reformist Représentants in salons and streets, agitation boiling since 1781 over franchise and taxes, whispers of revolt hanging heavy as the lake mist, with France, Bern, and Savoy eyeing the unrest like wolves at a lame stag.
She was surprised the Order didn't have a bigger presence with how precarious it all was—the oligarchs' grip fraying like old rope, Représentants pamphlets slipping under doors like knives in the dark. She had asked her father about it, over mulled wine in the château's solar, and he'd explained it with his usual measured calm: The Assassins' presence was highly defensive here, a web of shadows more watchful than warring. They left the doctor alone due to him being a lone entity, his digs too obscure for their blades, but each time the Order tried to set up a new Genevian Rite—cells in the watchmakers' guilds or burgher salons—it was dealt with swiftly, a hidden blade in the night or a "tragic accident" by the lake's edge.
Her father closed his book with a quiet thump, the sound swallowed by the carriage's creak. "Victor's estate is not far from the gates."
Élise had a thought, the words bubbling up sharp as a parry. "Will he not be upset we're arriving before dawn?"
Her father gave a moment of consideration, his fingers drumming the cover once, twice—a habit when weighing silences. "Perhaps, but I am his Grand Master. I have sent him several letters notifying of our journey here. He will do his duty and offer us shelter, if only to prove his loyalty."
The carriage slowed, lanterns catching the glint of iron gates ahead, their bars forged plain and sturdy, no sigils or flourishes to mark a Templar's hand. She could see a few guards holding halberds, their polearms catching the light in cold flashes, faces shadowed under tricorn hats—local Genevan watch, likely, conscripts in the republic's threadbare livery, no doubt earning coppers from the oligarchs to eye the roads for Savoy spies or Négatifs agitators. The carriage came to a stop, and she could hear the muffled conversation with their driver, one of Weatherall's men, his gravelly English bark trading travel papers and veiled coin with the gate captain.
It took a moment—long enough for Élise's pulse to quicken, fingers drumming her knee—before the gates creaked open on oiled hinges, and the carriage began moving again, gravel crunching under the wheels like bones under boot.
It only took a few more minutes before they arrived at an estate, its silhouette clawing up from the mist like a beast roused from sleep. It looked... forboding to Élise's eyes, the style heavily Gothic, all jagged angles and brooding stone that seemed to swallow the lantern light. Gargoyles leered from the eaves, their stone mouths frozen in eternal snarls, while a high black fence encircled the grounds, each post capped with a spear-sharp finial glinting like bared teeth. It was dark outside, she knew, the moon a sliver behind clouds, but she couldn't help the shiver that ran down her spine,
Her combat teacher let out a low whistle, the sound slicing the chill like a whetstone on steel. "Isn't this just an inviting-lookin' place?" he asked rhetorically, his English drawl thick with sarcasm as he eyed the gargoyles' leers.
Her father's features pulled tight, jaw clenching like a man tasting sour grapes. "Quite," François replied, voice clipped as the carriage door swung open to the manor's maw.
The Englishman stepped out first, Weatherall's boots thudding onto the cobbled drive with the solid grace of a man who'd danced with death too many times, the uneven stones slick with frost and echoing each step like a drum in an empty hall. His hand rested casually on the pommel of his saber, thumb tracing the worn leather wrap like an old lover's scar, eyes scanning the shadows with the flat focus of a hound scenting blood. Élise followed, her épée's cane a familiar weight at her side, boots scraping the cold cobbles with a gritty rasp that bit into her soles. She may not be as good as him at fighting—his parries were brute poetry, forged in English mud and French duels, hers still the elegant flick of a girl learning the blade's bite—but she could still put down an untrained opponent, a footman's clumsy lunge or a thief's desperate swing, her strikes quick as a wasp's sting. Besides, it was proper protocol for escorting a high-ranking Templar: The one being guarded was the last to leave the carriage, emerging unscathed into whatever waited beyond.
Her father stepped out of the carriage, boots firm on the frost-rimed cobbles, the large front doors of the manor creaked open with a groan like old bones protesting the cold. A man in a black suit with white gloves emerged from the gloom, his posture rigid as a sentinel's, face pale and lined under a powde red wig that caught the lantern's flicker. Their group moved to meet him at the landing atop the broad stone stairs, Weatherall's hand never straying far from his saber, Élise a step behind with her cane gripped like a lifeline, the air thick with the scent of damp moss and hearth-smoke.
The man gave a bow, deep but mechanical, his voice smooth as oiled hinges yet edged with unease. "Mes seigneurs, ma dame, this is a most strange time for visitors, and I would ask that you vacate the premises. You are more than welcome to return in the morning."
Her father pulled to his full height, shoulders squaring under the cloak as he ascended the stairs with deliberate steps, the lantern light carving his face into lines of unyielding authority. "I am François de la Serre, Grand Master of the Parisian Rite. I am here to see Monsieur Frankenstein. I had sent word ahead. I will have lodging for this evening."
The valet's eyes widened slightly, the white gloves twitching at his sides as color drained from his powdered face, caught between duty and dread. "I'm sorry, Grand Master, but I cannot allow you entry. Master Victor has given me specific instructions to allow no one entry—not even couriers these past weeks. He... he works on matters most delicate."
Her father stepped closer, voice dropping to that velvet-edged command that had quelled lesser lords in Parisian salons, the air between them crackling like frost underfoot. "Perhaps you misunderstood. This is not a request—this is an order. Summon your master; I would have words with him." He moved to brush past the suited man, cloak swirling like a shadow claiming its due.
The valet shifted into the path, body blocking the threshold like a bar of iron, his white-gloved hands flexing at his sides. "I'm afraid I have to insist you do not enter," he said, tone flat as polished stone, but his eyes—dark and unblinking—held a glint that wasn't deference.
Élise's heart began to pound against her chest, a wild drum in the cage of her ribs. What was this man doing? Her father was the Grand Master—you didn't bar him from your home, not without courting the Rite's quiet wrath. This was beginning to feel off, the night's chill seeping deeper, the gargoyles above seeming to lean in with leers too knowing.
The Englishman had moved forward in a blur of bulk and intent, Weatherall's meaty hand clamping the valet's throat like a vice on parchment. "Move, boy," he growled, thick accent rolling like gravel, and threw him to the side with a heave that sent the man sprawling across the cobbles, coat flapping like broken wings.
The valet scrambled up quickly, far quicker than any hired help had any right to—lithe as a fencer, no stumble in his rise—and tried to move in front of the door again, his eyes manic, whites flashing in the lantern glow, a feral edge twisting his powdered face.
This time, François drew his sword in a whisper of steel from the cane's hidden sheath, the blade catching the light like a sliver of moon on water. With a single, fluid arc—precise as a surgeon's cut, no flourish wasted—the edge sang through flesh and bone, decapitating the suited man in a spray of arterial red that painted the door crimson. The head tumbled with a wet thud, rolling to a stop at Élise's boots, eyes still wide in that final, mad defiance, body slumping like a puppet with strings severed.
She stared at the head, its powdered wig askew and eyes frozen in that manic glare, a dark pool spreading from the neck's ragged stump across the cobbles like spilled ink. Shock rooted her boots, but it was a fleeting chill—this wasn't the first dead body she had seen. With the unrest in Versailles, she had seen many dead on in the dark places of the streets when she had snuck out with Arno, slipping through alleys. He had always tried to help people while they were out there, pressing coins into beggars' palms or binding a cut with his cravat, but she knew that was foolish and tried to dissuade him. Those of the lower class would not thank them for their charity—resentment simmered in their eyes sharper everyday.
"There is something afoot here. That seemed almost… unnatural," her father stated, his voice steady but laced with the low thunder of suspicion, eyes scanning the manor's yawning door as if it might swallow them whole.
Weatherall snorted, wiping his saber clean on the dead man's coat with casual disdain. "You've heard the stories just as I have about the first civilizations' magic artifacts—twists the mind of any man."
Her father tutted, sheathing his blade with a snap that echoed off the stones like a judge's gavel in an empty hall. "Frederick, you know better than to call it magic. It is science. Just because neither of us understands it does not make it less so. It is why men like Frankenstein are necessary—to attempt to bring clarity to the chaos Those Who Came Before left us."
Weatherall gave a huff, his mustache bristling as he kicked the valet's rolling head aside with a booted toe, the dull thud muffled by the cobbles. "Science or sorcery, it stinks of trouble. Man's no business playing god."
Élise swallowed, the metallic tang of blood sharp in her throat like a swallowed coin, her hand tightening on her cane as the foyer beckoned, its maw a rectangle of flickering candlelight spilling onto the threshold. The air from within carried a chill draft laced with ink and ozone, pulling at her skirts like invisible fingers.
The burly Englishman waved the four men who had ridden on horses as the carriage's escort to move into the estate doors. They were Templars themselves, trained by their commander just as she had been, only they didn't have lessons in history, politics, and leadership—the subtle arts of salons and shadows. They focused completely on combat, their cloaks heavy with the scent of oiled steel and road dust, faces hardened into masks of quiet efficiency as they fanned out, pikes low and eyes scanning the gloom, one moving to light a torch to illuminate the dim light of the estates interior.
Their group moved to follow, boots echoing on the cobbles as the escort fanned out, pikes low and eyes sharp. When she entered, Élise was surprised how cold it was, the air biting like a crypt's breath, seeping through the heavy door to chill her bones despite the foyer's grandeur. Looking around, the entry room was impressive, a vault of shadows and excess that whispered of old money and older secrets. A large staircase, hewn from gray stone veined with quartz, spiraled to encompass the center of the room, its banister carved with grotesque faces that seemed to leer in the half-light. The walls bore works of art—dark oils of alchemical saints and ruined temples, their frames gilded but tarnished. Harsh black and gray wallpaper climbed to meet a coffered ceiling, where a massive chandelier of sharp black metal dangled like a crown of thorns, its candles guttering in the draft. Sconces of the same unforgiving iron lined the walls, emitting a dim, flickering light that pooled on the grand red carpet below, its weave so deep and crimson it looked almost royal, muffling their steps like blood-soaked earth.
Élise's breath fogged faintly in the foyer's chill, her fingers flexing on her cane as if testing the steel within; the opulence felt less welcoming than she was used to, its grandeur a cold mask over something watchful, like the gilded traps of Versailles salons hiding daggers.
"Where do you think he would be?" she probed, voice low to cut the echo. The estate wasn't small—hallways branched like veins, rooms yawning empty in the sconces' dim flicker. It would take a while to search through every chamber, rousing servants—who could act as the valet did—or prying locked doors, and time was a luxury they didn't own in the night's hush.
Her Grand Master pursed his lips in thought, the lines around his mouth deepening like furrows in fresh snow. "Hmm. That valet was insisting he was doing delicate work. The only place he would be doing that would be in his lab—a lab I would assume needs to be in a controlled environment, away from drafts and prying eyes."
She thought for a moment, gaze tracing the chandelier's iron spikes, shadows pooling on the red carpet like spilled wine. Where would be the most controllable room? One without foot traffic, which took any living areas or bedrooms out of the hunt—too exposed, too human. It could be some secret door or such in an office, a panel behind bookshelves. She shook her head, discarding it. No, that wouldn't make sense. He didn't need to hide things from comers and goers; from what her father said, Frankenstein was a hermit, barricaded in his pursuits like a monk in a mountain temple. So if it wasn't up, amid the faux royalty of this hall, then perhaps down—buried from the world, where the earth muffled the noise.
"Basement," she muttered, the word slipping out like a guessed cipher.
Her father looked at her with pride, a rare warmth cracking his composed mask, his hand brushing her shoulder in fleeting approval. "Indeed, ma fille—that would be the most likely place. Sharp as your mother's quill."
The mention of her mother sent a mixed wave of emotions. A sadness that had dulled a minscule amount since her death and a pride in herself. She loved her mother. She had been her role model, the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect templar. The perfect woman. She pushed down the sadness and tried to bring the pride to the forefront. She was on offical business. She would not allow emotions to intrude upon it.
"You four, pair up and search for a way down. Grand Master, Élise, with me," Weatherall stated, his voice a gravelly command that brooked no argument, the escort snapping to pairs with the efficiency of men who'd bled for less.
It took several minutes—tense, fruitless taps on panels and curses muttered under breath—before one of the pairs found it: A door that blended seamlessly into the wallpaper, its edges camouflaged by swirling damask patterns, but easy enough to spot if you were looking, a faint seam giving way under probing fingers.
They gathered up, readied their weapons with a chorus of steel whispers—pikes leveled, sabers half-drawn—and headed down, the stairs spiraling into chill darkness lit only by sputtering torches that smoked like dying breaths. Élise's cane tapped each step, her pulse a steady drum against the quiet, the air growing thicker, laced with ozone and something sharper, like scorched metal.
As they got to the bottom of the stairs, they moved into a room that left her jaw drop, the sight hitting like a parry gone wrong. The landing room was nothing like she had ever seen, a chamber carved from some impossible white stone that gleamed seamless as bone, the floor a single vast block polished to mirror sheen, reflecting their lantern flames in fractured stars. The walls were equally white, unmarred save for strange golden indents—grooved sigils and lines that twisted like veins, pulsing faintly as if alive, casting an otherworldly glow that made shadows flee to the corners. Along each wall stood pedestals of white marble, each crowned with a glass box etched in frost-like filigree, and inside... she wasn't sure, but everything was made of gold metals, intricately wrought devices and an orb, some etched with glowing lines that hummed low, a vibration she felt in her teeth. Maybe Freddy was right—Weatherall, with his blunt tales of "first folk's wizardry." Maybe this was magic.
Her father moved to place his hand on one of the glass displays, fingers hovering over the cool surface as if testing the hum of the golden artifact within, when a scream ripped through the room—raw, guttural, a howl that clawed at the air like talons on stone, coming from the door she hadn't noticed on the other side of the room, half-veiled by a heavy velvet curtain embroidered with alchemical runes. Everyone snapped into action, the group's cohesion honed by Rite drills kicking in like a well-oiled mechanism. They moved swiftly, boots silent on the marble floor—two of the men sidling up to either side of the door, both pulling their Charleville-Mézières made flintlock pistols from their holsters, hammers cocking with twin metallic clicks that echoed off the white walls. The rest of the group fully readied their weapons: Pikes leveled, sabers whispering free, the air sharpening with the scent of oiled steel. Élise unsheathed hers, the épée's slender blade catching the sconces' glow in a silver flash, her grip steady despite the scream's echo thrumming in her chest like a second heartbeat.
Weatherall booted the door in with a crack of splintering wood, the frame shuddering as it gave way, hinges screeching in protest.
The sight that they all saw made them pause, breaths held in the sudden hush, the scream dying to a ragged gasp. The room looked the same as the last, its white stone floor and walls unyielding as bone, golden indents pulsing faintly along the seams like veins under skin. In the center squatted a table-like chair, brutal in its ingenuity—leather straps buckled tight across wrists and ankles, a metal frame tilting the occupant half-reclined like an offering to some forgotten altar. A boy was strapped to it, physically no older than fifteen or sixteen, dark tousled hair matted to a sweat-slick brow, pale skin etched with iridescent scars that glowed like trapped lightning. A scream tore from his throat again, all-encompassing, shredding the air as golden liquid pumped into his arm through a thick glass tube, bubbling from a reservoir on a wheeled stand, the fluid shimmering with unnatural fire.
On the other side stood a man, wild and haggard as if the devil himself had wrung him dry—hair disheveled and unkempt, falling in matted strands over a forehead pallid as death, eyes sunk deep in sockets ringed with black exhaustion, cheeks hollowed like a skull's grin. His frame trembled, thin shoulders heaving under a stained frock coat, hands shaking as they adjusted a valve on the tube, oblivious to the intruders. A pair of golden eyeglasses perched on his nose, strange blue lines flickering across the lenses like lightning in a bottle, shifting patterns of data or delusion. He was staring intently at the boy on the table, murmuring feverish nothings—"Endure... the light... perfects"—not even noticing their arrival, lost in the grip of his own unmaking.
Her father moved first with purpose, striding across the marble floor like a storm given form, the rest moving like shadows that surrounded him—Weatherall at his flank, saber drawn low, the escort fanning out with pikes leveled, their breaths syncing to the room's unnatural hum. "Victor! I demand you cease this!" François's voice boomed, only just cutting through the boy's screams, a raw torrent that rebounded off the white walls like a soul flayed alive.
The wild man seemed to notice them through his mad stupor, his head jerking up as if yanked by invisible wires, sunken eyes squinting at her father through the golden lenses where blue lines danced like captive storms. His hands trembled on the valve, serum dripping golden from the tube, staining the boy's arm in rivulets that sizzled faintly on skin. "No, NO! Never cease. He will be perfect! Like them but more rigid. Less fluid and bound to the present. Like the first two. Yes. YES! I am so close!" Victor's words spilled out in a frenzy, spittle flecking his beard, his frame quaking as if the Shroud's fire burned him from within, oblivious to the blades encircling him like fate's noose.
Élise's grip whitened on her épée, the boy's agony twisting in her gut like a blade half-turned, his screams a raw bellow that clawed the air, veins bulging golden under his skin as the serum coursed like liquid fire.
The Grand Master reached into his coat and produced his pistol, a beautiful silver pistol that she had only ever seen her father possess—its barrel a cluster of seven slender tubes arrayed in a revolving cylinder, etched with Rite sigils that caught the lab's eerie glow, the stock inlaid with ebony and ivory inlays. He had called it a repeating Cookson pistol, a marvel of English ingenuity, its mechanism far beyond the standard flintlock's single, laborious shot: A lever on the side drew powder and ball from hidden magazines in the buttstock into the rotating breech, cocking the hammer and priming the pan with each turn, allowing six or seven rapid fires before a full reload—death's wheel spun swift, no pause for ramrod or powder horn, a hunter's dream in an assassin's night. "Victor, stop this now or I will shoot!"
The look in the eyes of the maniac shifted, wild fervor cooling to a serpent's gleam, and when he spoke, his voice took on a tone so different from only a moment before—smooth as oiled venom, laced with the cold certainty of a prophet reciting scripture. "I cannot allow you to stop this, Grand Master. I am ushering in a new age for the Templar Order, for the world. We will become as great as we once were, as the Isu made us. My son will be the first. He will be the Adam of a new age!"
Not a moment after the words left him, three quick gunshots echoed through the room—sharp cracks that shattered the air like breaking glass, two slamming into Victor's chest in twin blooms of red that soaked his frock coat, the third burrowing into his skull with a wet crunch, misting the wall behind in a grisly halo. He stood for a moment in rigid horror, eyes wide in that final, uncomprehending betrayal, body frozen as if the time had paused. Then he dropped to the ground bonelessly, limbs splaying in a heap of stained wool and spilled serum, the golden eyeglasses clattering free to spin lazy circles on the marble.
Élise moved on instinct, rushing to the still-screaming boy, her épée clattering forgotten to the floor as she reached the table-chair's edge. The tube in his arm throbbed with its vile glow, golden liquid bubbling furious through the glass like venom in a spider's fang. She got to it and yanked it out with a savage twist, the needle tearing free in a spurt of blood and serum that splattered her glove, stinging like acid on skin. She was unsure if that was the best course of action—poison in the veins, or poison withdrawn?—but with the operator now dead, sprawled in his own making, there wasn't any other option. The boy let out a last wet scream, a gurgling wail that rattled the pedestals' glass domes, before falling silent, the only noise being his ragged breaths—shallow gasps that hitched like a bellows starved of air.
She moved to unshackle the straps that held him in place, fingers fumbling the buckles slick with sweat and serum, her father's hands joining hers—steady, paternal, unyielding as he worked the ankle restraints with the precision of a man who'd bound treaties and broken men. Once the straps were unbuckled, the boy stayed in place, body limp as a discarded puppet, his eyes screwed shut against the world's assault, chest heaving under the thin shift stained with gold and crimson.
Élise moved to sit near his chest, perching on the table's edge, and took off one of her gloves with trembling teeth, the leather peeling away to bare her palm. She placed her bare hand on his face gently, cupping his fevered cheek, feeling the unnatural warmth radiate through scars that pulsed faint like dying embers. "It is okay. You are safe now," she murmured in the most calming voice she could muster, soft and lilting like a lullaby from long-ago nights, mirroring her mother's tone when she'd comforted a small girl waking from nightmares of shadows with too many teeth.
The boy slowly opened his eyes, lids fluttering like moth wings against the light, revealing depths of golden white—irises pale as burnished coin, flecked with the serum's lingering fire, glowing faint as dawn through frost, locking on hers with a flicker of raw, unspoken plea that pierced like a needle's prick.
Élise held his gaze, her bare palm still cupping his cheek, the unnatural warmth seeping into her skin like a vow half-spoken, threading through her veins with a gentle insistence that made her breath catch. "William," she breathed, piecing the name from Victor's ravings, her voice a thread in the room's heavy hush, fragile against the lab's lingering hum. "It's over. The pain... it's over."
His expression was one of utter incomprehension, brows furrowing in a boy's bewildered frown, as if the very thought of the pain being over was an impossible notion, a lie too sweet for a world of endless fire. The golden-white of his eyes searched hers, raw and unguarded, reflecting the serum's afterglow like embers in milk.
The look made Élise want to shoot the dead man a dozen more times, to empty the Cookson's chambers into his cooling corpse until nothing remained but echoes of her rage—fury for the She put on her biggest smile, the kind that was honest and real, born from summers with Arno in the orchards or sitting on her father's knee as he read her a book, the words weaving safety around a child's fears. It turned watery as her eyes betrayed her, tears trickling down her cheeks in silent tracks, hot against the chill air that seeped from the white stone walls.
He gazed at her with haunted eyes, shadows lingering in their pale depths, and gave a smile of his own—a tentative curve of lips, fragile as frost on glass, speaking of hope kindled in the dark, a spark against the void. His hand raised slowly to touch her own that was still pressed against his cheek, fingers trembling like leaves in a hesitant breeze, cool and tentative against her skin.
Before falling asleep, his eyelids drooping heavy as lead, his hand twitching once against hers in a ghost of a clasp—a fragile bridge across the chasm of his making, sealing the night's mercy in quiet promise.
She promised herself in that moment, a vow etched silent in the marrow of her bones. She would make sure that this boy—that William—never felt pain like this again, not from the Rite's shadows or the world's cruelties, her hand lingering on his cheek as his breaths evened to sleep's fragile rhythm, a oath in the lab's dying glow.
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