Yvette climbed into the rowboat, playing her role as the “informant,” and was carefully winched down from the warship’s side.

“Bit unsteady compared to the big girl, sir—might make your head spin. But we’re close to port,” the navy oarsman said cheerfully.

From this low vantage, the battleship loomed like a living fortress. Its rigging formed a lattice of ropes and sails, geometrically perfect, ready to dance with any gale. The black maws of gunports beneath the deck promised hellfire—a hundred cannons waiting to roar. One synchronized broadside would light up the sea like infernal fireworks.

That fish-man’s bulletproof hide meant nothing here. Even if he hid, the merchant ship beneath him would splinter under cannonfire, plunging him into poisoned waters. Collateral damage be damned—progress had its price.

Science wins again, Yvette mused. Without the harpoon’s tech, she’d never have pierced his defenses. Give it another century, and nitro-powered guns would turn his scales to confetti.

Power levels among the supernatural might stay fixed, but their impact shifts with the times. That fish-man? In the Bronze Age, he’d have been a one-man apocalypse—decapitating kings, scattering armies. But now? Ulysses sweet-talked a battleship into service, and its cannons hit harder than a coven of warlocks.

Progress marched on. By her old world’s timeline, these sail-driven behemoths were already relics. Albion’s navy still clung to canvas, but the papers whispered of steam—Royal Dockyards buying engine factories, hiring specialists. Ironclads loomed on the horizon.

The rowboat’s sway stirred her thoughts. She’d pin today’s chaos on a foreign spy stealing steam-warship blueprints. Royal Navy secrecy, treason charges for loose lips—clean and credible.

She tucked a windswept lock behind her ear. The skin there prickled—splinters from the shotgun blast, probably. No matter. Yet the forming bruise felt... odd. Almost eyelike.

That evening, Yvette drafted her sanitized report: [Date]. Spy disguised as dockworker steals schematics, drugs crew with rum, attempts hijacking. Heroic Navy thwarts plot.

She handed it to the palace courier and bedded down at Ulysses’ manor. Had his masquerade as the colonel held?

Are there more of us in the court? The report needed highborn authority to seal witnesses’ lips—Trident Shipping crews, naval gunners. Only palace power could hush that up. The Duke’s reach? Or others?

Hooves clattered outside. Ulysses’ carriage.

Boots climbed the stairs.

“Colonel swapped out?” she asked.

“Drunk and shipped off. Crew gagged. Your side effects?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Gone. Eyes cleared faster than my powers.” She flashed a healed lower lid.

Her hair shifted, revealing the bruise.

Ulysses reached. She batted his hand away.

“Splinters,” she lied, yanking her collar up. Why the recoil? Embarrassment, surely.

His pause was microscopic. “Rest. Medicine.” He bled into a cup. “Drink.”

Old habits bowed to doctors’ orders. She gulped it down.

“Sleep.”

“Not tired—”

“You will be.”

Ten minutes later, she was dead to the world.

Her window creaked open. Ulysses swung in, scalpel gleaming.

She slept like a shipwreck survivor—robe hiked, leg hooked around twisted sheets. If society learned he’d crept into a lady’s bedchamber...

Since when do you flinch? Her earlier rebuff nagged. Hopefully, the mark’s creator would strike soon—he preferred not to play burglar nightly.

The bruise glowed. A mirror twisted toward her. An eyebull floated up, pupil locking onto Yvette.

Veins squirmed around the mark, creeping toward her skull.

Ulysses dropped from the shadows, smashed the glass, and crushed the eye in his fist.

“Got you.”

Across London, a man screamed into a shattered mirror.

“Payment due for damages!” a servant chirped outside.

“SCREW OFF!”

Cheap hotels were miserable, but safer. His right socket gaped, nerves squirming toward nothingness.

His stolen eye never regrew. They took it. Made it theirs.

He fled into the night, hat low, heading for the lawless outskirts where feuding factions might lend aid. The Diamond of Strife kept London’s hunters divided—but beyond its glow, alliances flickered.

By the time the one-eyed fugitive reached London's outskirts, another rider pounded toward the Tower under a moonless sky.

The guardian materialized from shadowed arches like ink spilled from a nightmare, his obsidian cloak rippling. Recognition flashed through him as torchlight caught the visitor's golden mane. "Halt, Sir Ulysses! Even old comrades don't wake sleeping oracles at this unholy hour!"

A casement screeched open above. "His Lordship receives the knight," droned a maid's voice. "And Otto - stop bellowing like a guttersnipe."

The shadow warrior shrank. "As... as you say, madam."

In the tower's crown chamber, Ulysses faced a creature resembling a melting candle - Spindle, once human, now a quivering mass of necrotic tissue. Each forbidden divination exacted its toll, transforming flesh into tumorous growths that pulsed like diseased fruit.

"S-straight to business, then?" Spindle's voice bubbled through collapsing airways. The knight's outstretched palm answered - an eye staring up from raw meat, capillaries squirming like parasitic worms.

"This one's missing. Track him."

Protocol demanded refusal. Peering beyond the Veil required council seals and voting quorums. Yet how could he deny the man who'd saved Lancaster's line? During Spindle's youth, he'd rashly probed Ulysses' fate-strands - and recoiled from the vision. Where common souls showed tangled threads, the knight blazed like molten silver, cords as thick as anchor chains binding him to Spindle's ancestors across centuries.

"Confirmation first," Spindle wheezed as visions coagulated. The eye's owner emerged through mists - a pamphleteer distributing treatises in St. Giles, whispering heresies in a Lambeth opium den. "Doomsday Clock?"

Ulysses nodded. "So the rumors hold."

Spindle's gelatinous form rippled. Every council member knew the schism - after the Trinity Reformation cracked, the radicals had fled underground. These Doomsday Clock apostates saw mortal morality as chains, believing true power lay in embracing cosmic indifference. Their bombings and assassinations targeted not just churches, but Enlightenment values themselves.

"Then protocol requires purification." Spindle's eyes transformed - pupils dilating into black oceans where galaxies drowned. "No pursuit needed. My report ensures his execution by dawn." The stars in his gaze shifted coldly. "You must withdraw. Their ideas corrupt through mere exposure."