Faye woke up with a start, shivering from bone-deep cold.

Something was very, very wrong. It had been a long time since Faye last needed sleep, or felt temperature as anything beyond detached recognition.

Remembering was hard. There was a void where she must have gone to sleep – or passed out? The last thing that rang clear in her head…

Her brother. He’d come to her, looking exhausted and sad, and gave her…

Faye started looking around frantically. A box, he’d given her a box with a necklace in it, and…

“Keep it safe for me,” he said. “I’ll come back for it, but in the meantime, keep it safe, alright?”

The ornate box sat neatly on a shelf in the living room. Faye considered putting the necklace on, but decided against it – it would be safer inside the house, protected by mechanical guards as well as Faye herself.

Only then did she realize that the house was eerily quiet – no familiar whirring of gears, no little legs of crab messengers running errands. As Faye looked out into the corridor, she found empty shells of her companions, drained of magic and life.

Faye shuddered again and more by force of habit than need grabbed a warm green scarf – Lawrence’s gift from a long time ago, full of lint from overuse. She wrapped it around her shoulders, finding comfort in the gesture and grounding in the soft fabric.

She still felt cold.

Leo, she had to find Leo – her brother would know what had happened, what to do next. He’d help her fix the clockworks, and he’d figure out what was wrong with her own body. Things would be fine, as long as she could find him.

Faye stepped out of the empty house, alone and afraid. Out on the streets, things were equally unnerving, not a soul in sight. From outside she could see that many houses, including theirs, had been heavily damaged – roofs caved in, windows blown out. It was as if a hurricane had passed through the city.

She called out – hoping there would be someone, anyone that would answer, but the only other sounds were the howling of the wind and the rustling of snow under her feet.

And that was another thing wrong, because last Faye remembered it was the middle of the summer. She caught a snowflake in one hand, and waited until it slowly melted in the warmth of her palm – it left a small imprint on the metal, far too corrosive to be normal.

Faye grabbed an umbrella and Leo’s old knee-high boots.

She wandered the city for as long as she could, until the umbrella was reduced to a metallic skeleton with drags of fabric over it. She called out, terrified of what human skin could become under the snow, and hopeful that it meant her brother couldn’t make it to her and was still safe somewhere.

The weather changed at least three times while she was outside, but it never became good. A snowstorm forced her into hiding, tiny icicles frayed her dress, but she seemed to be the only living soul in the city left to endure it.

With the thick clouds covering the sky, there was no telling what time of day it was. It was dark, and then it became even darker, and something howled in the distance, forcing Faye to return to her house.

Faye’s body didn’t sleep anymore. As the storm raged outside, not letting up for longer than a few hours at a time, she sat by the window and watched and listened. She clenched her fist around the medallion with her brother’s and her portraits, and wished for him to be safe, shuddering from the inexplicable cold and fear.

She wasn’t sure how long she spent like that.

Days, or maybe months passed. Faye repaired the clockworks, breathed new life into them and sent them out in her stead to search. Every time, they returned battered and empty-handed, and every time Faye meticulously repaired them.

The cold didn’t let up.

The city remained dead.

Her brother never returned home.

—–

To be continued here