Lord of Crimson Madness
London, 1878.
Beneath a shroud of gray fog, a young aristocrat awakens in a lavish bedchamber with no memory of how he arrived there.
Only a phantom pain remains, throbbing in his neck as though an unseen blade had once passed dangerously close to his throat.
His name is Elias Montagu.
His servants call him the Duke of Manchester. They dress him in silk, fasten his insignia, and prepare him for a crucial session in the House of Lords.
There is only one problem.
Elias remembers none of it.
And the throne belongs to King George V.
Something is wrong with London.
Cathedrals rise above the city, devoted to forgotten gods whose names seem to shift from tongue to tongue: Senaiy, Uire, Siny, Urey, Senry, Ueis. Their scriptures contradict one another, yet their followers worship with absolute devotion. Their stone idols possess no faces that Elias can recognize, only hollow eyes that seem to follow him long after he has turned away.
The moon hangs unnaturally low over the city, stained crimson against a sky that feels far too vast. Big Ben stretches impossibly high above the rooftops, its distant chimes carrying a hollow note that leaves Elias with the uneasy certainty that he has heard them before.
Then the memories begin.
Not memories of this world.
Ruined cities beneath unfamiliar skies. Machines powered by a force Elias cannot name. Towers collapsing beneath a darkness without stars. And, buried among these fragments, the image of a colossal crimson eye staring directly into his own.
Something is watching him.
Something that may have been waiting for him long before he was born.
As Elias moves through gilded ballrooms, secret societies, and corridors where servants whisper of things they refuse to name, he begins to question the identity everyone insists belongs to him.
The more he remembers, the less certain the world becomes.
In a world built upon forgotten truths, those who seek clarity are not called prophets, scholars, or kings.
They are called madmen.
And among them, one title is spoken only in a whisper.
The Duke of Madness.
