You hear the penny-dreadful tales, don’t you? Souls whisked off to other worlds, landing in lives of ease and splendor. Reborn as young lords in grand manors, with enchanted baubles at their fingertips or a spectral mentor whispering secrets.

But my own ‘grand arrival’? No gentle angel to light the path. Instead, a repulsive, foul deity—some forgotten horror from a darker age—claimed me. I was tormented to the very edge of oblivion, then pitched into a twisted, gaslit world of shadows and fear.

I awoke in the frail body of an orphan girl, shivering in some rat-infested rookery, choked by smog and despair. Weak, plagued by illness, with a hunger that gnawed relentlessly. My new story didn’t start from scratch; it began deep in the dregs, clawing my way up from less than nothing.”

Now, all I fight for is to live, to see another grimy sunrise over these cobbled streets. Not just for my own skin, but for him—the one whose fate is tangled with mine, the one soul I cling to in this godforsaken, fog-drenched city.