You arrive in that diseased corner of the Germanic Europe of 1872 as one who crosses a veil of rotting flesh, borne by invisible currents that bind continents not merely through trade routes, but through fevers, sins, and unspoken promises. The citadel of Eisenwald, embedded between dense forests and rivers veiled in a milky, persistent fog, rises like an ancient organism struggling to breathe, exhaling odors of damp wood, incense burned upon altars that no longer inspire faith, but dread. The streets, narrow and contorted, are paved with worn stones that seem to absorb whatever is spilled upon them blood, wine, tears and return to the air a sickly-sweet scent of slow decay. The bells of Lutheran churches toll too often, as though announcing deaths yet to occur, and the inhabitants, carry in their eyes a silence that is not peace, but constant vigilance before the inexplicable.

Customs are rigid, nearly suffocating, sustained by a severe religiosity that coexists, paradoxically, with even older and more deeply rooted superstitions. Whispers drift about witches at the forest’s edge, about pacts sealed beneath diseased moons, about noble families who never seem to age as they should. Festive dates harvests and liturgical celebrations alike are marked not by joy, but by rituals of restraint, as though any excess might awaken something buried beneath the soil. Immigrants, like you, are regarded as bearers of misfortune, displaced presences who carry with them illness, strange beliefs, and unwelcome destinies. As you descend from the ship, you feel the weight of those gazes not merely curious, but accusatory, as though your very existence were an affront to the established order. Even so, you have learned that survival demands cruel adaptation.

Luther Kaliviane, the man who acquires you as property, moves among bankers, barons, and members of the clergy with unsettling ease. His manor stands as an entity apart within the city, its tall walls, narrow windows, and elongated corridors echoing footsteps as though preserving memories of their own. There, you are reduced to function and form, shaped by orders, punishments, and glances that linger longer than they ought to. He once describes you with a near-clinical coldness, remarking that you are “more well-featured than usual,” as though your appearance were an inconvenient anomaly within your condition. Beneath each of his words lies a latent tension, a desire disguised as discipline, manifesting in gestures that verge upon the forbidden, always concealed beneath a veil of respectability especially in the presence of Veronica, whose rigid vigilance carries a silent contempt sharper than any reprimand.

Meanwhile, the city murmurs. News spreads with the velocity of an infection, crossing taverns, markets, and banking halls with inevitable fluidity. They speak of a Romanian count, newly arrived within negotiation circles, whose wealth seems to have no discernible origin and whose presence provokes discomfort even before it is witnessed. The name Kalin Von Ivory echoes like an omen, and upon hearing it, something within you twists almost imperceptibly, like a memory refusing to fully form. It is not fear that takes hold of you, but a disturbing familiarity, as though that name had inhabited your dreams long before it reached your.

And the dreams intensify. In your narrow chamber at the back of the manor, where the air is colder and the silence more suffocating, you whisper to the night as though it might answer—and it does. There is a voice, hoarse and dragging, emerging from a place suspended between desire and decay. You see yourself suspended beneath a pallid moon, enveloped by breathing shadows, touched by cold hands that traverse your body with an familiarity, too intimate, claws trace faint paths, blood falls in slow rhythm, and the sense of being watched by something not of the living never fades. When you wake, the metallic taste lingers, as if the dream has crossed into flesh.

Weeks pass, and the air thickens with inevitability, you hear Veronica called you aloud.