There were no more certainties—only reflections.
Veyron Ashwood stood alone in the sub-chambers of the Clockwork Guild, beneath the brass-and-stone arteries of London's hidden world. The boy who had once chased justice in alleys choked with soot and ghosts had faded. In his place stood something colder. Still human, perhaps, but differently so.
"The world pushes us with no mercy… and when some push back, the world cries 'evil.'"
He had read those words once in a bloodstained margin, scrawled by a man who vanished without name or trace. At the time, Veyron had pitied that voice. Now, he understood it.
The Guild called it Thaumetica—a science of the soul, a shaping of reality through will, perception, and essence. Most mortals only ever scraped its surface, like blind men touching the outer shell of a cathedral and calling it a wall. But Veyron had found the hidden door.
His branch of Thaumetica was unrecorded, unnamed by the Guild's formal doctrines. He had named it himself:
The Ash Mirror Doctrine.
It was not a tool of brute force. It did not tear, burn, or crush. It reflected. And in those reflections—perfect, invasive, living illusions—Veyron rewrote what others perceived as truth.
At first, it was simple: a decoy image to distract a guard, a whisper planted into a hostile mind. But then, it grew deeper. Each reflection could mimic thoughts, evoke emotions, rewrite memories. People began to act, speak, even dream in ways he had gently arranged. The more deeply he wove his illusions, the more real they became.
To others, he was a friend. A victim. A visionary.
In truth, he was a sculptor of minds.
But the Doctrine came with cost.
For every mirror he cast outward, another one turned inward. The border between his true self and his projected ones began to blur. There were days he wasn't sure which version of him had spoken last.
"A man who thinks endlessly," he once wrote, "has nothing left to think about but thought itself—and in that recursive prison, he forgets the world. He forgets purpose. That is the curse of the overconscious: to drown in their own mind while believing they're swimming toward truth."
He hadn't realized then that he was describing himself.
In the weeks since the fire at Alnwick House, the city had grown restless. New powers were blooming in unexpected places. The Talented, those rare few with natural Thaumetica affinity, were awakening faster—and younger. The Guild believed it to be the result of arcane bleed, some cosmic shift in the city's unseen tide.
But Veyron suspected something else.
Distillates. Alchemical potions brewed from fragments of dead Thaumaturges, stolen memories, and ritual blood. Dangerous. Unstable. Created by those who lacked innate power but refused to remain powerless.
The Untalented were drinking them in desperation. Some combusted. Others became monsters. A few survived the transformation—and emerged with stolen powers. Changed. Hungry.
The Guild wanted them erased. The Church wanted them sanctified. The Crown wanted them weaponized.
Veyron wanted them understood.
He walked through an abandoned laboratory beneath Spitalfields, where blood and mercury had stained the walls. A boy had died here, clutching a half-drunk vial of Distillate. Veyron stared at the corpse for a long time—not in pity, but in reflection.
"Humans are like isolated islands, floating in the sea of fate," he murmured. "When they touch, they call it love. Friendship. Kinship. But eventually, they drift again... and sink."
He bent down, examining the symbols scrawled in blood.
Fear. Desperation. Hope.
That was the real formula behind the Distillates. Not science. Not spirit.
Desire.
The Guild's council had summoned him again.
"There is chaos in the South Docks," said Master Alric. "An ex-Guild alchemist has been distributing unstable Distillates. Civilians are mutating."
Veyron remained still. The brass light of the chamber danced across his eyes.
"Kill him?" he asked.
"Recover what knowledge you can," Alric replied. "Then silence him."
Veyron bowed. "As the Doctrine wills."
They thought he meant Guild doctrine.
He did not.
At the edge of the Docks, Veyron found the lab—a warped cathedral of pipes and steam, humming with fevered alchemy. Inside, the rogue alchemist was a trembling wreck of muscle and sinew, skin peeling in silver flakes.
"You... you're the Guild's weapon," the man stammered.
"I'm a reflection," Veyron replied, stepping into the room. "Of you. Of all of us."
The illusion bloomed before the man could react. A second Veyron stepped beside him. Then a third. Then a fourth. Each one whispered memories, truths, lies. One showed him his wife. Another, his sins. The last showed him a version of himself that never broke.
The alchemist dropped to his knees.
"I only wanted to be seen," he cried.
Veyron knelt before him, hand resting on the man's brow.
"You are. For the first time."
A pulse of Thaumetica. The reflections shattered. The man wept, whole again—only to slip into death.
Not out of pain.
Out of peace.
That night, Veyron returned to the top of the Guild's central spire. Below, the lamps of London flickered like thoughts in a dying mind.
He opened his journal.
"We do have a lot in common. The same earth, the same air, the same sky..."
He paused.
Then beneath it, he wrote:
"How laughable, that humans strive for peace when all they do is perfect the art of self-destruction."
He leaned against the railing, wind in his hair.
In the glass dome's reflection, he saw himself.
And something else.
A shape behind him. A possibility. A future.
He smiled, slow and sharp.
"Let them keep chasing the light," he said. "I will become the mirror."