The rain fell in fine, needling sheets, stitching shadows across the soot-black rooftops of London.
Gaslight seeped through the mist like dying embers, casting halos around broken windows and rusted drainpipes.
The Count of Veyron strode through it all like a blade through silk — sharp, silent, unstoppable.
At his side skipped Felix Gray, a burst of life against the death-colored night.
His boots splashed through puddles without care.
His grin was a lantern, swinging wildly in the storm.
"You're going to change the world," Felix said, voice bright, balancing a silver cogwheel on his fingertip. "And I get to help. Imagine that — me, the scrap rat!"
They ducked into an abandoned warehouse, where the rain became a distant drumbeat on the sagging roof.
The gaslight inside was weak, flickering against cracked brick and rotting beams.
Felix dropped his battered leather satchel onto an overturned crate.
From its depths he drew out strange, gleaming treasures:
A slender wristblade, its mechanism no bigger than a matchbox, gleaming under a film of oil.
A cane hollowed with a secret chamber, tiny glass ampoules nestled inside like sleeping serpents.
A pocket watch with hands that ticked backward, its brass casing etched with miniature skulls.
"All tuned just for you, boss," Felix said, rolling back his sleeves, his grin impossibly wide. "Art made for war."
The Count picked up the wristblade, turning it in the dim light.
Every hinge was precise. Every screw lovingly tightened.
Felix watched with eager eyes — waiting for a word, a nod, any flicker of approval.
None came.
But Felix smiled anyway, like a dog happy to be near the fire.
Later, as the night thickened into black syrup, Felix lit a battered pipe and blew rings into the stale air.
"You could smile sometimes, you know," he said lightly, nudging the Count with an elbow. "Might scare fewer children that way."
His laugh bounced off the hollow walls — warm, reckless, alive.
And for a moment —
under the sickly yellow flicker of a dying lamp —
Felix looked less like a man, and more like a ghost.
Only once, when he thought no one watched, did the grin falter.
A crack — hair-thin but bottomless — split across his face.
A glimpse of a sorrow so vast and raw it might swallow the world.
But then:
He blinked.
He smiled again.
He laughed louder.
The mask sealed itself without a seam.
The Count of Veyron — the blade walking among ruins —
Never noticed a thing.