Beneath the spectral glow of a pallid moon, shadows stretched across the lonely cottage outside London.

  Midnight had long passed, yet lamplight still bled through heavy curtains fluttering at the window—their crimson velvet whispering secrets to the night wind with every flicker of candle flame within.

  Had any soul glimpsed that accursed chamber, they'd have fled screaming of warlocks and damnation. Blood sigils crusted dark on oaken tables. Ancient grimoires—their pages fat with decay—lined sagging shelves. A yawning chest disgorged jars of unnatural preserves: desiccated wings, coiled reptile tails, floating digits with nail beds black as sin.

  The cottage's master scratched at parchment with a quill dipped in ichor. His twisted arm—knit crooked after some forgotten fracture—jutted at unnatural angles. Chapped lips recited half-remembered litanies between phlegmy coughs that bubbled like swamp gas.

  Autumn's bite gnawed through England, yet the man's overlarge coat threatened to bury him. Beneath scratchy wool lurked a tally of wounds he could trace blind: the forearm shattered by a mummy's crumbling shield in Luxor's dust; lungs ruined by jagged bones when tumbling down a sacred mound fleeing formless horrors; the calf still oozing where ghoul-teeth had torn meat from bone in some nameless European crypt.

  On breathless dawns after surviving the unspeakable, he sometimes wondered why he courted these eldritch truths. But the answer lay in ancestral manuscripts yellowing in their iron-banded chest—manuscripts proclaiming no merciful gods watched over mankind, only idiot deities writhing in celestial madness. Through decades of forbidden study, he'd glimpsed Things that curdled sanity, heard whispers from Between that promised power... and doom.

  Fear and hunger warred in his soul. To remain mortal meant helplessness before cosmic terrors. Yet despite ritual scars and stolen lore, his veins lacked the tainted blood of true sorcerers. Only stolen knowledge and desperate gambles remained—advancing his game of damnation inch by inch.

  Tonight, perhaps, checkmate.

  The ritual had worked—after a fashion. The Mist-Dweller from Beyond took his flesh like a ill-fitting glove, its alien voice rasping through his ruined throat of paths to power. Then departed... but left stains on his soul. Now shadows whispered behind mirrors. Something watched from moonlit corners with eyes that weren't eyes.

  His trembling hand adjusted the brass telescope—its lens trained on stars that shouldn't exist. Equations sprawled across paper—hyperbolic geometries that hurt to contemplate. Just days more...

  An owl shrieked mockery. There came a wet click behind him—like claws on stone. He didn't turn. Couldn't. The kerosene lamp flared brighter, its light cold as the void.

  Meanwhile, in Bloomsbury's respectable streets, a hired cab deposited Yvette before a Georgian townhouse. Her gloved hand rang Stein's bell.

  The maid's suspicious eye assessed her through the door-crack. "No unscheduled callers, sir."

  Yvette bit back a smile—in men's attire, even servants missed the truth. "Mr. Stein expects me. We corresponded."

  Moments later, a florid-faced inventor wrenched the door wide. "Mr. Fisher! Forgive Martha's caution—these days, journalists swarm like wasps about my work!"

  The foyer's centerpiece explained his pride—a brass telescope scarcely taller than a walking stick. "My own design," Stein preened at Yvette's interest. "Flint and crown glass in counterposed lenses. Brings Orion's belt near enough to touch!"

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  Yvette's finger brushed cold metal. "Marvelous craftsmanship. Tell me, has anyone... unusual... inquired about such devices recently?" A vision flashed—the cottage's crooked stargazer, his corrupted scope drinking in forbidden constellations.

  From the Church's perspective, astronomy stood as the most accursed of sciences. The ancient Europeans had long intertwined stargazing with astrology, much like China's seasonal calendar derived from celestial movements. As Earth journeyed through its eternal cycles, the firmament's shifting tapestry heralded summer's warmth and winter's frost—patterns our ancestors discerned in Babylon's ziggurats and Rome's marble forums. Where stars governed harvests, they must influence mortal fates—thus the forbidden art of astrology took root.

  Holy writ declared providence solely God's domain. Astronomers and stargazers threatened divine order with their charts and prophecies. Worse still lurked in Church whispers—entities older than Scripture traversed the void, their dreadful secrets best left veiled by ignorance. Though Renaissance fires rekindled pagan learning, pyres still consumed star-mad heretics... until necessity triumphed dogma.

  A century past, Enlightenment pragmatism prevailed. Coffee and spices from New World colonies proved sweeter than theological disputes. Navigators needed stars; kings demanded treasure fleets. Reluctantly, the Church unchained astronomy. Telescopes multiplied, lenses grinding faster than scripture could forbid them. Royal observatories welcomed scholar-priests, while amateurs formed stargazing clubs—none more passionate than the Star Seekers Society.

  Herr Stein's new telescope model exemplified this democratization—compact enough for gentleman's libraries, yet sharp enough to chart lunar craters. His first shipment sold to Society members within days. "Portability meets precision," the inventor boasted, polishing his sole remaining sample.

  Yvette studied the brass instrument without interest. Her quarry wasn't metal and glass, but a phantom from fevered dreams—a leprous star pulsing with monstrosities, unseen yet omnipresent. No tome mentioned purple comets. Perhaps mortal eyes required mechanical augmentation... or a touch of divine sight granted by darker patrons.

  "Mr. Stein," she inquired, affecting dilettante enthusiasm, "since Piazzi spotted Ceres, how many minor planets have emerged? I dream of christening one—Yvette's Comet has such flair!"

  The inventor coughed diplomatically. "Ah, the Star Seekers discuss such matters. But discoverers must use female names. Ceres was harvest goddess. Sir Isaac's star becomes Newtonia. You'd need..." He gestured apologetically. "Yvette, perhaps."

  Her teacup rattled. This cruel mirror of her double life—male alias "Yves" forged from her true name—nearly shattered composure. Coincidence, surely? Stein showed no suspicion. Church-sanctioned sexism permeated even the stars' nomenclature.

  Returning home, Yvette leafed through a Star Seekers pamphlet acquired en route. Meteor showers, jupiter's moons... then a footnote about childhood wishes upon falling stars.

  Memory struck like lightning. Moore's dream—children chanting desires as violet death fell. Black Jack coveting wealth, becoming a murderer drunk on stolen champagne. Two peasant children granted twisted wishes through alien intervention. Mathematical impossibility... unless the stars themselves answered.

  At her desk, quill hovering over the Society's address, wings beat against glass. A raven's obsidian eye glinted—Alison, feathered spy and occasional snack-thief.

  "Fetch biscuits, would you?" Yvette murmured. The stars could wait; this omen demanded feeding.