Elian de Volterra sometimes couldn't help but imagine—when God created this world, it probably wasn't a very respectable job. Sleeves rolled up, hands most likely covered in grease and rust.
Otherwise, how could you explain the current situation? The sticky stuff on his fingertips—sulfur powder, rosin, mixed with a bit of salt crystals—allowed him to cling to the sixty-foot-high stone wall of the Soria Ducal Palace like a gecko. This was Florence at midnight; the bells of Santa Maria del Fiore had just fallen silent, and the entire city was wrapped in a thin layer of mist that carried the faint smell of olive oil from someone's late-night cooking.
Quite embarrassing, but still effective.
At least it had been effective until moments ago.
"Hiss—" A very faint sound. The suction cup to his left suddenly released a string of pale little bubbles. His heart nearly leapt out of his throat; his whole body lurched downward, fingernails scraping across the mortar between the bricks with a grating noise that set his teeth on edge.
"Fuck," he hissed under his breath, so quietly even the wind ignored him, pressing himself flat against the cold stone. "Why did the mercury affinity drop? This doesn't fucking follow the *Hermetic Fundamentals*… unless the aether density in this section is off too…"
He looked up at the half-open stained-glass window high above. That was his target tonight—the ducal library, known in certain circles as the "Silver Corridor." Tucked against his chest was a tattered map, the only thing his father, that old clockmaker, had left him. Drawn on it was the location of the alchemical tome banned and re-banned by the Church: *The Greater Arcana*.
He took a deep breath. The air smelled of rain-soaked earth. His right fingertips brushed lightly, triggering a tiny lever hidden in his wrist brace. A drop of pure sulfur essential oil seeped through the gaps between his fingers into the suction cup.
*Equivalent exchange, spirit of nature.* He silently recited the phrase in his mind.
The moment the oil met the mercury salt, a warm, slightly burning thrust surged through his palm. The suction cup clamped back onto the stone with ferocious grip. Elian didn't dare linger—hands and feet working together, he moved like a dark-red shadow and in just a few swift motions vaulted over the windowsill carved with the face of Medusa.
He landed without making a sound.
The Silver Corridor was much larger than he had imagined. Moonlight slanted in through the long, narrow skylight, falling across the black-and-white checkered marble floor like rows of giant piano keys. The air carried a mixture of smells—lubricating oil evaporating from precision gears, the musty odor of damp old vellum, and a faint but brain-clearing scent of ink.
Something was wrong. He noticed it immediately.
At the far end of the corridor, the enormous orrery known as the "Crown of the Renaissance"—made entirely of silver and brass, nearly a story tall, representing the Church's absolute authority in the geocentric model—was moving.
It should have produced the deep, even, organ-like meshing sound of nine celestial spheres turning.
But right now it was groaning. Creaking like someone with a toothache.
"The axis is offset by 0.5 degrees."
A voice suddenly cut through the air—cool, steady, like a silver scalpel lightly slicing the silence.
Elian's back hairs stood on end. His right hand instinctively moved to the reaction vial of elemental "sulfur" at his waist. Following the voice, he looked—and behind layers of overlapping mechanical shadows, he saw her.
Isabella di Soria, the second daughter of the Duke of Soria. She stood on a tall rolling ladder, not wearing one of those suffocating ballgown corsets, but a deep-purple velvet cloak over a crisp man's white shirt. In her hands she held a long-handled compass and a graduated brass slide rule. Her black hair hung loose, the ends smudged with dark lubricating grease.
"If you're here to steal a copy of the *Greater Arcana* rubbing," Isabella said without turning her head, eyes still fixed on the Saturn dial on the brass track, "I suggest you wait ten minutes. The gear at the Gemini point is jammed. The vault's physical lock is currently deadlocked. Unless you want to use gunpowder and summon half the province's Ember Knights."
Elian slowly straightened up, narrowing his amber eyes. Wariness mixed with a certain… gleam of excitement, the look of a hunter spotting worthy prey. He released the test tube in his hand; the corner of his mouth unconsciously curved upward.
"Lady Soria? Shouldn't you be at the ball right now, surrounded by a swarm of perfume-drenched nobles, instead of spending the middle of the night communing with a pile of rusty brass?"
Isabella finally turned her head. The moonlight caught her face perfectly, outlining the flawless profile of a marble statue. But those gray eyes were cold as ice, staring straight at Elian's fingers stained black with chemical residue.
"Balls are for people with disordered logic who use alcohol to escape reality," she said, closing her notebook with finality. "I am attempting to correct a world that is on the verge of collapse. By the way, alchemist—" She paused. "Your 'gecko suction cups' failed not because of declining aether density, but because you miscalculated the thermal expansion and contraction of the marble surface. Tonight's temperature differential is six degrees. You should have added three percent more salt to the formula."
Elian froze. He ran the equation through his mind at lightning speed. His expression subtly changed.
"Three percent? That would destabilize the mercury—"
"If you rearrange the molecular geometric loci using Euclid's triangular partitioning method, it wouldn't." Isabella slid lightly down the ladder and walked up to him. She was half a head shorter, yet the sheer intellectual pressure she exuded made Elian feel like *he* was the one backed into a corner.
"Knowledge belongs neither to vaults nor to those brain-dead priests who can only chant Latin incantations." She looked at the groaning orrery, a flicker of something—sorrow?—passing through her eyes. "It belongs to those who can understand the patterns. Come, lend a hand, alchemist. Inject your 'mercury' into the third axis. My calculations indicate it needs a non-solid supporting force there."
Elian stared at her. This girl wasn't just unafraid of him—she was *ordering* him?
"If you're wrong," he said in a low voice, though his hand was already reaching for the precise syringe in his wrist brace, "both of us are going to get crushed into paste by this silver machine."
"In my world," Isabella said, raising her compass again, her gaze sharp enough to cut, "there is no such thing as 'error'."
That night, deep in the shadows of Florence, the sparks of sulfur and the logic of the stars interlocked with perfect, seamless precision for the very first time.
And on the street below, black warhorses clattered over the bluestone pavement. Their hooves shattered the moonlight reflected in the puddles—and with it, the last remnants of the old era's calm. The rider was named Malach, an Inquisitor of Heresy.