Volume 5 Part 2: The Timeless Realm.
The city glowed beneath a wash of gaslight and brass. Its skyline was cut by chimneys, iron bridges, clock towers and airborne carriages whose steam vents hissed into the cold evening air.
This was the eighteenth century as the old histories would have recognized it at a glance yet it was not the plain, candlelit age those histories described. This was a steampunk era where aristocratic refinement had been fused with mechanical technology. Steam engines powered everything from locomotives to private elevators.
Gears turned behind carved mahogany panels and where even the rich drank their tea beneath chandeliers laced with copper pipes and pressure valves. The wealthy loved it because it made them feel civilized and advanced at once, as though progress itself had been tailored to fit beneath velvet sleeves and embroidered cuffs.
By the time the auction house opened its doors, the elite of the city had already begun arriving in waves. Carriages lined the street outside the massive hall while servants rushed between them with boxes, cloaks, parasols.and folded invitation cards sealed in red wax.
Men stepped out in fitted coats with brass buttons and polished cane handles. Women wore layered gowns with mechanical lace clasps, jeweled chokers and gloves that concealed tiny clockwork fittings beneath the fingers. The air was thick with perfume, coal smoke and the sharp metallic scent of steam escaping from nearby machinery.
Wealth here was not worn quietly. It announced itself in every detail from the ticking pocket watches to the monocles, the motorized carriage doors to the soft hum of private automata carrying luggage across metal steps.
Inside the hall, the scale of the place was enough to silence even the most arrogant visitor for a second too long. It stretched upward in tiers of balconies and iron-framed galleries with a ceiling painted in faded scenes of commerce and industry.
Suspended suns above rows of velvet seats, each one fitted with glass globes that glimmered with gaslight fed through hidden tubes. The stage at the far end was broad and elevated, framed by gold trim and curtains that could rise or fall with a single turn of a valve. Every surface seemed designed to impress, intimidate and separate the ordinary from the privileged.
Footmen moved through the aisles with trays of wine, brandy and sugary pastries, while attendants in dark uniforms stood by the walls, watching the crowd with professional stillness. The auction itself had not begun but the room was already alive with whispers.
The rich did what they always did before anything valuable appeared before them. They speculated. They boasted. They pretended to know more than they did. A countess with a pearl net over her hair leaned toward a banker in a silver-embroidered waistcoat and asked whether the rumored relic from the northern colonies had truly been authenticated.
He answered with a smile that suggested he knew the answer and would not give it freely. Two industrial magnates near the center aisle discussed the rise in mechanical import tariffs while a younger nobleman complained that the latest steam-driven servants were too delicate and failed when exposed to humid weather.
Another woman, draped in black velvet and diamonds, dismissed a pair of paintings already displayed along the side walls as "inferior reproductions," only to fall quiet when she learned they had been brought in from a private collection that afternoon. That was how this hall worked. Everything was either a status symbol or a test and the people gathered here believed themselves skilled enough to pass both.
There were items already on display under glass and iron latticework, enough to make lesser crowds stare for hours. There was a music box no bigger than a hand, carved from ivory and fitted with a self-winding mechanism that played an entire symphony if activated correctly. A pair of opera glasses edged in mother-of-pearl and powered by an internal lens engine that could enlarge distant details with unsettling precision was also available.
There was a brass astrolabe said to have belonged to a forgotten navigator who had charted routes through storm belts no one else had survived. There was also a pocket-sized automaton shaped like a bird. There was even a seal ring with a miniature rotating chamber inside it, designed to hide letters and chemical samples. The audience admired each one but only in the way one admires an appetizer while waiting for the main course.
Everyone in the hall knew that the true prize had not yet been revealed. That was the rumor spreading from seat to seat.
A painting.
Not just any painting, but one of the legendary works attributed to the Painter of Origins. The rumor itself was enough to change the mood of the hall. Heads turned. Conversations dipped lower. Servants lingered longer than they should have. Even the men who had entered with the posture of unshakable confidence now leaned in to listen whenever the name was spoken.
The Painter of Origins was not a figure people spoke of lightly. Her works were famous because they were not idealized fantasies or decorative commissions. They were too real for that. Her paintings looked less like art and more like moments the world had accidentally preserved. Faces carried breath. Cloth seemed to remember movement. Light fell across surfaces with almost terrifying accuracy.
And yet, no one had ever seen one in private circulation.
Her paintings belonged to Muse's Artworks, a protected moving building that appeared in different cities and districts, always open to the public for free. It was always guarded beyond reason and always impossible to rob. It did not remain in one place long enough for any theft to be planned with confidence and even when thieves tried, they failed spectacularly.
Some had vanished. Some had collapsed before reaching the inner galleries. Some had touched the frames and died on the spot. No official explanation ever satisfied the public and no rumor was ever fully disproven. The only thing everyone agreed upon was that Muse's Artworks was not merely a museum. It was a fortress with a taste for beauty and its owner, an unknown woman known only as the Painter of Origins, had made it clear that nothing inside could be taken without her permission.
So the rumor that one of her paintings was being auctioned was scandalous. It was the sort of event that rearranged the ambitions of an entire social class. If the painting was real, then someone had gained access to the impossible.
If it was for sale, then one of three things had happened: the Painter of Origins had allowed it, someone had betrayed her or the world was changing in a way no one in the hall fully understood.
None of those possibilities discouraged the crowd. They only made it worse. Men who had come prepared to bid on antiquities now began calculating new fortunes. Women who had shown up out of curiosity started asking whether their family vaults contained enough assets to compete. Every whisper carried the same hunger beneath it.
The auctioneer finally stepped onto the stage and the room began to settle. He was a tall man dressed in formal black with immaculate gloves. A polished mask covered his face from brow to chin except for the narrow slits where his eyes caught the light. It was a deliberate choice as though he had come prepared to remind the room that mysteries were part of the transaction.
He lifted one hand and the hall was quiet almost instantly. The last clink of glass faded. The servants stopped moving. Even the steam vents embedded in the stage edges seemed to hiss softly.
"Honored guests, welcome to tonight's private auction. You have been selected from among the city's most distinguished patrons, collectors, financiers and connoisseurs of rarity. The items presented this evening have been authenticated, secured and prepared for bidding under the strictest conditions. As always, all claims made before bidding are final, all bids are binding and all disputes will be settled according to the laws of this house."
A murmur moved through the crowd. The auctioneer let it pass, then turned his gloved hand toward the covered platform at his side.
"Let us begin. This is the Compass of Navigation, used by an ancient sea pirate. It's said to hold treasure..."