The Twenty

The Shadow in the Smoke London, 1883. Soot stained the rain, and gaslight fought a losing battle against the fog. For Eliza Grey, life was a cycle of threadbare dresses and silent factory machines. Until the letter came. It bore no postmark, only her name and a single symbol: a circled star. Inside was a ticket for the last train to Halcombe, a village not on any map she knew, and a lock of hair belonging to her brother, Thomas, missing for five years. That hair, in the lamplight, shimmered with a faint, silver light. With nothing left to lose, Eliza went. The train car was empty, the engine soundless. It passed through a tunnel that lasted too long, emerging into a twilight world of violet skies. Halcombe station was a single platform of black stone. A man awaited her, tall in a worn greatcoat. “Miss Grey. I am Silas. You’ve been called.” “Called? By whom?” “By the circumstance of your blood,” he said, his eyes holding a glint like polished flint. “Your brother is one of the Twenty. Now, it seems, you must be another.” He opened his hand. On his palm lay a small, cold clockwork beetle. Its jeweled wings twitched, pointing away from the station, into the dark woods. “There are nineteen others,” Silas said. “Some protect the world from what slips through the cracks of reality. Others… seek to widen those cracks. Your brother walked with the former. He is lost. The balance is failing.” Eliza, her heart a drum, took the beetle. It whirred, warming against her skin. She thought of Thomas’s laugh, now just a ghost. She thought of the grey life she left behind. “Where do we start?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt. Silas nodded, a flicker of respect in his gaze. “We follow the pointing wing. And you learn what it means to be the Twentieth.”

Disclaimer: This show may contain expletives, strong language, and mature content for adult listeners, including sexually explicit content and themes of violence. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons, businesses, places or events is coincidental. This show is not intended to offend or defame any individual, entity, caste, community, race, religion or to denigrate any institution or person, living or dead. Listener's discretion is advised.Less