Ashes Beneath The Brass by OsirisI at Inkitt

Summary

Before the city knew him as Red Jack, before his name was carved into the bones of Gildenspire's nightmares, he was simply Valentine Graves, a man of guile, charm, and impossible luck. He dazzled tavern halls with his illusions and slipped aces beneath silver cuffs while nobles bet fortunes on his grin. But his greatest wager wasn't made across a velvet table. It was whispered in smoke, filled rooms, dealt in secret, and betrayed by a coward's tongue. The man's name was Calder Venn. A clock-smith with crooked ethics and a shivering conscience. Calder had once toasted with Valentine over cold gin and warm dice, promising discretion for a share of whatever the trickster might win. But fear makes traitors of all lesser men. When the Brass Court came knocking, six gods in brass masks. Calder told them everything: about Valentine's infernal dealings, the rituals, the sleight-of-hand sorcery hidden beneath the jokes and theatrics. Valentine was taken, broken, and rebuilt. His soul ripped out and bound to the Clockwork Heart, his body flayed and soldered with brass and bile. The trickster died screaming. What returned was not a man. Years passed, but revenge doesn't rust. One storm-slick night, Calder Venn was found inside his workshop, every cog turned against him. The bells of Gildenspire chimed midnight when his lungs were filled with molten mercury and his hands stitched to the gears he once repaired. A playing card rested on his chest, nailed to his sternum by a rivet through his heart. The Queen of Spades.When they pulled the body down, the card was still warm.And far away, in the highest eaves of the city, a low laugh echoed through the fog. Valentine had begun his game. And this time, the deck was his.

Genre: Horror/Adventure

Author: OsirisI

Status: Ongoing

Chapters: 7

Rating: n/a

Age Rating: 18+

Prologue

In the east, where the brass towers catch the sun and the soot-choked streets drown it, there stands a city balanced between wonder and ruin. Gildenspire. Once forged as a beacon of progress, its veins of steam, copper, and arc-light pulsing with invention, it has become a place where shadows rot beneath golden facades. The upper spires glitter with opulence, where clockwork barons toast to forgotten gods and whisper names that should not be spoken. Below, in the Undercity, rust devours what remains of hope. Smoke coils through alleyways like serpents, and gears grind over bone.They say the city dreams. But it is a fevered dream, one infected by him. Red Jack.None know what he is. A man? A specter? A mind born from the madness of the Fold? Only that his song lingers in copper pipes, that his laughter cracks between radio static and gaslight flickers. That those who vanish are not always missed. And those returned are never quite the same.Now, puppets walk among men. Hollow-eyed things in borrowed flesh, strings pulled by an unseen hand. Forgotten wards burn sigils into walls, and the air tastes of rust and remorse.

But the city still lives. It stirs.In the alleys, in the clocktowers, in the dying minds of those who remember a time before the brass bled red, there are still secrets buried in ash. Names lost. Knives hidden. Truths waiting to be pried from twisted lips and coiled wires. Gildenspire endures. But something is coming. And this time, it remembers.