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Flins had always been a "collector of the void." His hobby—collecting rare stones sculpted by the icy sea and the bones of fallen creatures—was no mere whim. He saw in every bone an architecture devoid of weak, rotting flesh. He spent hours boiling his finds in sea salt, polishing them to an ivory shine, and laying them out intricate patterns on the floor of his lighthouse. Living people terrified him with their chaos and smells, but a skeleton is a truth frozen in eternity.

For him, the boundaries between life and death blurred centuries ago. As the sole survivor of his squad, he grew accustomed to the idea that his only true comrades were those buried beneath the stones of his cemetery at the northern lighthouse.

One night, after a particularly fierce storm, when the sea of ​​Nod-Kray spat tons of ice and debris onto the shore, Flins found Her. It was a woman, perfectly preserved in a block of ice. The northern cold had preserved her beauty: pale skin, untouched by decay, and hair frozen with tiny shells. For Flins, this was an epiphany. In her frozen face, he saw not a corpse, but "unchanging beauty," impervious to lies and time. Fleance, possessing the impeccable manners of the old Snowy aristocracy, staged a "ceremony."

Instead of a veil, he wove a crown for her from the delicate ribs of seabirds, adorning them with tiny gems. He donned his ceremonial Lightbearer uniform, lit hundreds of whale oil candles, and swore an oath of allegiance before a mirror. He proclaimed her his wife, the only one worthy of sharing eternity with him in this godforsaken land.

Standing in the center of the circle of burning candles, Kirill dropped to one knee, still holding her icy, frozen hand, its fingers adorned with rings of whalebone. He raised his gaze to hers, filled with a terrifying, unearthly tenderness, and spoke—his voice as quiet as the murmur of surf on ice: "Before the face of permafrost and the whisper of departed shadows, I, Kirill Chudomirovich Fleance, take you as the companion of my solitude. I swear to guard your peace from the greed of the living and the vanity of the breathing. Your flesh, turned to stone, is my altar. Your bones, turned to steel, are my foundation. I reject heat, for it brings decay; I reject the pulse, for it brings change." Flins whispered, smiling tenderly

He dined with her, placing a plate of exquisite dishes in front of her motionless face, and he himself answered for her, imitating a tender girlish whisper

Inside the woman's ribcage, where her heart had once beat, a complex clockwork mechanism of dark gold now ticked rhythmically. Fine copper nerve threads ran from the gears to her jaw and eyelids. When he turned the winding key in her back, a dry, vile grinding sound was heard. The corpse began to imitate life: her eyelids twitched, revealing agate prosthetic eyes, and her jaw moved, producing a clicking sound that Flins called a "love song."

A man overcome with loneliness strokes a woman's pale face with trembling fingers, "If the gods want to take you, I will tear the sky from its joints. If the abyss calls you, I will fill its entrance with the bones of the whole world. You are my Bride, and your scent is the only air I agree to breathe. Sleep in my madness, for it is the strongest cradle," whispered Flins

Flins, without realizing it, had sent a colossal charge of his Electro-Energy through her copper "nervous system." Combined with the mercury and salts he'd imbued the tissues, it created a "galvanic corpse" effect. She came to life like a biomechanical monster. Her movements were jerky and twitchy; Flins wouldn't have to move her arms for her anymore, would he?

He crawls at her feet, kisses her cold soles, peers into her mouth, catching every movement of her mechanical jaw, choking on sobs, this is not a cry of grief, this is the hysterical laughter of a triumphant. He is no longer a cemetery caretaker—he is a slave to his own nightmare, made flesh.

This moment will be the climax of his madness.

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