Beneath the Stars: Star Traces in the Fog City

In the year 1187 of the Steam Era, in an age resembling the late Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, in Griffin, the Fog City of the United Kingdom of Lunsat. Its rival powers overseas are the Iron Salt Republic and the Empire of Dawn. The stars in the night sky have not shone since the Great Silence three hundred years ago. Lorne inherits a detective agency, along with a journal that writes by itself, a brass pocket watch that can see things that “should not be seen,” and one warning: “Do not open the basement door.” The gray fog never lifts from New Harbor City. People live on in a daze, never asking where the fog comes from. Until Lorne discovers that every missing-person case leads to the same bronze bell, and every echo of its chimes conceals a voice that does not belong to a human. The bronze bell is one of the seven fingers of a sleeper. The gray fog is its breath, drawn over billions of years. And the pocket watch in Lorne’s hand is the sleeper’s only open eye. When the Church wants to use it, the lingering light of the Old Ones wants to awaken it, and everyone is making choices on behalf of the sleeping being Lorne decides to see the truth with his own eyes.