They say it’s tool-making, but even monkeys crack nuts with stones, and crows fish snacks from windows with hooked wires. Seventeen human cousins—rudolfensis, Neanderthals, Penghu Man—once crafted blades alongside us. Stronger, hardier, yet only we survived. Wherever sapiens trod, others vanished.

  Odd, isn’t it? We lost to Neanderthals for millennia—until one day we didn’t. Their caves became ours, their bones our trinkets, their flesh our meals. No new claws or fangs, just... something changed.

  Scholars from another world call it the spark—when imagination birthed gods, nations, and lies. Before, we chattered like apes: "Berries here!" "Wolf!" Blood bound our tribes. Then, suddenly, we could whisper: "Join us. A spirit favors me."

  That tiny lie built empires. Priests promised banana-filled heavens to strangers who'd die for them. Other humans? They’d shrug at such fairy tales. No myth could stir them to fight beyond kin. So they fell, outbred and outbled by dreamers.

  Yvette’s world knew this tale. Here, Darwin’s just returned on the Beagle, scribbling Origin of Species. If the pattern holds... was our spark kindled by horrors beyond the stars?

  Reality’s our domain; the Old Gods rule thought. Their touch taught us to wage holy wars, erect kingdoms, chain kin—all for illusions like nation or faith. Original Sin? Perhaps the serpent’s gift was their whisper. No wonder the Crawling Chaos spurns prayers.

  The office erupted when she entered. "We scooped London!" The wedding issue—pre-written, pre-approved—had flown to press the instant photos were slotted in. Rivals scrambled for days while their fourth edition sold out.

  "Backlash?" she asked.

  "Pious types clucked tongues," sniffed an editor. "Till the Archbishop blessed the match! Now telegraph operators are marriage material—who’d trade a modern Romeo for some cavalry fop?"

  "Enough. Find a fresh scandal before they catch up."

  "Already done!" They handed her a draft:

  "SHAKESPEARE: IMPOSTER OR ICON?"

  Peacock feathers on a crow, it claimed. How could a glover’s son—no Greek, no Latin—write Caesar? His will inventories bedsheets, not manuscripts. Legal scenes? Flawless. Battle tactics? Absurd. Clearly, some lord ghostwrote them—likely Francis Bacon (Elizabeth’s rumored bastard, philosopher, and occultist).

  Bacon. Yvette’s pulse hitched. The man who’d chased all knowledge, even the forbidden...

  A cadre of scholars now scoured his papers. "They’ve found parallels!" the editor crowed. "Shared errors, shared foes mocked in plays—it’s war in the journals!"

  The proof? A portrait of Will, his face bisected by a faint line—like a half-on mask.

  For a heartbeat, the ink seemed to writhe—

  Then nothing.

  Coincidence, she decided. Bacon’s Rosicrucian ties meant nothing here. This was just pedantry run wild, like squabbles over who really wrote Dream of the Red Chamber.

  By the time Yvette wrapped up her work, the clock hands had crept well into the afternoon. Across London’s smoky skyline, the booming peal of church bells sent crows scattering—their wings beating a somber rhythm as they fled past her window.

  Back in 1496, some Venetian ambassador had scoffed that Londoners coddled their crows like pets. Truth was, the city’s very name came from the Celtic Lugdunum—meaning "raven" or "raven god." Whether Celt or conqueror, all had seen the birds as guardians.

  London’s feathered residents even had royal keepers. They’d picked at Charles I’s bones, feasted on Cromwell’s corpse, and during the Plague, they’d cleared paupers' unburied dead. Rich or poor, maybe being eaten by crows was a man’s last scrap of dignity.

  From the editorial office’s upper floor, Yvette watched a cart haul away a frozen beggar, crows circling it like mourners. She sighed. Time to head home.

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  Fleet Street, home to ink-stained intellectuals, wasn’t kind to thieves. Shop windows here were broad and spotless—no hiding sticky fingers behind grimy glass. Constables patrolled often enough that pilfering was a fool’s game. This wasn’t the sort of alley where street rats thrived.

  So it stuck out when Yvette spotted the grubby girl. Seven or eight years old, maybe, her nose pressed to a bakery’s window like the glass might dissolve under sheer longing.

  A clerk noticed. A polite word later, the kid trudged off.

  Typical London. Shopkeepers here were too refined to shout at urchins. They’d ask you to leave, fetch a bobby only if you lingered. Yvette knew the drill.

  The city’s gutters teemed with parentless brats—some dumped by drunkards, others run off before the fists flew. Beggar rings swept up the clever ones, milking pity for coin. The rest just starved. Yvette couldn’t vet them all, so she played it safe: Food for the moneyless, coins for the foodless.

  She’d almost approached the girl when a woman cut in—coal-scoop bonnet, fur-trimmed cloak, beauty marks pasted like afterthoughts. The kind of getup that screamed "kept woman."

  Then Yvette spotted the rash peeking under the bonnet’s rim.

  Syphilis. The beauty marks were stage makeup. And this actress’s next role?

  Kidnapper.

  "Poor lamb, where’s your mum? Fancy some hot soup and a soft bed? You look just like my girl—God rest her..."

  The widow’s fingers curled around the child’s wrist. Yvette stepped in.

  "Let me handle this. I’ve lodgings nearby."

  Up close, the girl was no street veteran. Beneath the grime, her dress fit well—tailored, not scavenged. Plump cheeks, wide eyes. Someone’s darling, freshly lost.

  The widow tightened her grip. "Surely a gentleman isn’t fit to

  After leaving the Burodos' home, Yvette led Denise by the hand as they visited nearby neighbors.

  "Do you recognize this child?"

  "I’m afraid I don’t recall seeing her before."

  "Pardon the interruption—might you have noticed her at the Burodos’? Were they caring for her?"

  "Oh... I’ve attended a few dinners there, but no, she doesn’t ring a bell. To my knowledge, the Burodos only have one son—a darling boy. If she’s a relative’s child, I wouldn’t know..."

  "An only son?" Yvette pressed.

  "Absolutely. An angelic lad—blessed by heaven itself," the neighbor gushed.

  A boy.

  Yvette thanked her, disquiet gnawing at her. Earlier, Mrs. Burodo had emerged in a nightgown damp enough to cling, the wetness pooling conspicuously at her chest—like a nursing mother’s leak. Yet her son was roughly Denise’s age, and should’ve been weaned long ago.

  And that crib—why discard something so new? Its bedding bore a single stain, the rest untouched by London’s grime. More damningly, Denise’s drawing showed the couple cradling an infant alongside their child. A perfect match for the crib.

  And then there was... that moment.

  When Denise weakly hurled the cup, Yvette had felt an inexplicable twinge of disappointment.

  She should’ve hit her.

  Why had that been her thought?

  Distracted, she barely registered Denise wrenching free—until the girl darted toward the Burodo house, straight into the path of an oncoming carriage. The driver swerved, horses rearing just in time.

  "Devil take you, brat!" he roared, shaken.

  Yvette pressed coins into his palm to soothe his fury, then checked Denise. The girl hadn’t been struck—she’d tripped on a stone before falling. Yet when Yvette lifted her, Denise’s face was a mess of tears and dirt, her hands scrubbing at her eyes like a possessed thing.

  Gently, Yvette peeled back her eyelids—and froze.

  Denise’s once-luminous blue eyes now bulged with dilated whites, her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Worse, they darted inhumanly fast, like a reptile’s—then snapped to Yvette, pupils swelling back to normal. But the eyes stayed vacant, unseeing.

  Blind?

  Denise clung to Yvette’s coat, mute and sightless, as if retreating inward.

  Those eyes hadn’t been human.

  Was Denise the anomaly?

  Bundling her into a carriage, Yvette raced to Hampstead Heath—only to find Ulysses absent.

  "Jawbone’s away on business," Winslow said. "But I’ll assist however I can."

  Noting Yvette’s glance at Denise, he summoned a clockwork maid to tend the child elsewhere. Yvette then recounted the horrors—the crib, the neighbors’ claims of an only son, and those eyes.

  Winslow listened, stone-still. Even after she finished, he remained rigid.

  "What is it?"

  "...Nothing pressing. Just an old memory," he lied smoothly.

  "You suspect she’s in peril? Or that she is the peril?"

  "The former. The cure may be simple—but the scar it leaves... lingers."

  Meanwhile, the Burodo residence rang with laughter.

  "Our genius boy—feeding himself at last!" crooned the father.

  "Only yesterday, he fumbled with his plate," the mother wept joyfully.

  Every servant, down to the soot-streaked scullery maid, crowded the dining room, gawking as the boy ate. Normally, such rabble wouldn’t be permitted upstairs—yet tonight, they watched his every chew like a sacrament.

  His eyes, black when Yvette visited, now gleamed Denise’s same vivid blue. He giggled, staring awestruck at the cutlery, the candles—anything.

  One candle’s glow drew a moth.

  The boy’s eyes locked on it—and the insect twisted midair, wings crumpling as if crushed by invisible fingers. Then it plopped into his waiting mouth.

  Crunch.

  Yellow-green slime oozed down his chin.

  A servant vomited—but not just from disgust.

  Lately, nothing made sense: the pristine crib in a disused room, the masters’ new edicts (feed the boy anything, but never touch him), the way the staff obsessed over the child...

  And now, the shadow.

  As the moth died, candlelight cast the boy’s silhouette—except it writhed, stretching into something not human.

  Before he could scream, the servant realized—they were all staring.

  "How dare you upset the young master?" the household hissed in unison—and reached for him.