Setting the Stage

I advise that you listen closely. It is in your best interest to heed my words, if you want the best outcome.

Are you prepared?

You are ready?

Excellent!

Then let us begin as all great stories do—With a beautiful, broken land filled with beautiful, broken people!

Our world exists before her story is ever told.

This is a country without a name, a land without limit or boundary, yet it is known far and wide in lust for its plentiful resources and envy of its bountiful industry. Production lines wield natural resources with strict efficiency, molding metals and flora into products deemed more precious than they were in Mother Nature's grounds. Fruits and veg were plentiful, golden wheat reached toward golden sun, and the fields stretched further than the skies themselves. Spreading access to such excess was achieved through developmental progression in transportation and production lines, further feeding the country's thriving economy as it tested its boundaries of experimentation and profit.

And where such interests reside, greed and conflict are sure to follow. Discussions and calls for improved work conditions were met with pushback and, soon, aggression. A war amongst the once united people broke, igniting a civil war that broke the social classes into combatant enemies, considered little more than predatory animals to each other.

These once novel technological advances were made invaluable as the country's civil war raged, feeding the ground with blood and furor until the people could not withstand the losses both financial and moral anymore. Iron and steel had been warped and twisted into pristine firearms, charcoal burned in fireplaces and gunpowder to keep others warm and alive.

The spearheads of such an industrial movement? The Caine Family, legendary in their own right, for better or worse.

Nowhere in all this land are its resources of glowing metals and rotting fruits more recognized than its most aristocratic estate—the Icarus Manor. The mansion had been erected countless generations ago, constructed to depict a visage just as grand and imposing as the family housed within. These are the people argued most necessary in the war, fueling combat with their equipment—The best kind of business for a factory such as theirs. As the Cinaes established their foothold among their growing community, their mansion became its dazzling crown jewel. It was majestic and intimidating all at once, erected atop a great hill to look down upon as the lazy waves of their small private beach lapped against the rocky cliff below.

In the present, the manor's presence felt even more looming, watchful and patient, as if waiting for something.

Or, perhaps, it is someone awaiting another person, a change as impactful as that which rose the home and its residents to infamy themselves!

This world, intimate contained in a bodice of lace and iron, is strung and set. The paramours are awaiting their opportunities to woo their beloved and be smitten in turn, their hardy carapaces cracked open to unveil their innermost workings. All we're missing is our heroine. And how fortunate it is—She has just arrived, ready for her rousing adventure of suspenseful romance!

...

The young woman's head was pounding, her brain beating with thoughts she was unable to reach through the rolling fog and painful pulses. It felt like her body was punishing her for even trying. Limbs heavy and lungs groaning with breath, her palms slapped against her forehead, dragging down just enough to pinch at her throbbing temple.

A groan, the unfortunate lovechild of exhaustion, confusion, and annoyance, crawled up and out of her throat. At least the sound was one step closer to finding her voice, as she blinked her eyes against the oozing light. It was limited, too early in the morning to afford shine more than glow, but rays still peaked through cobwebbed windows. Shadows played against the weathered floorboards, and the other beds were already empty and made.

It took a slow count of ticking seconds before her brain caught up to her bleary eyes.

Blinds should have been drawn over the window.

The sunlight should not have been hitting her from this angle even if they were open.

There should not have been more beds in her room.

This was not her room.

She jolted up with a start, her headache the least of her problems as her neck snapped back and forth. Muscles twitching and eyes widening in panic, she curled inward on herself. She could not help but stare, a confused cross between awe-struck and horrified, as her right hand slapped around the side table next to the bed. She knocked an extinguished candlestick out of its holster, the wax cracking on the floor before rolling under the bed and out of sight.

Finally, thankfully, she found her glasses—A small miracle considering neither they or she should have been here in the first place. As she slipped them on, pupils dilating to finally take in the details of this new environment, her legs kicked off the thin wool blanket frantically. It really was just one revelation to another, as she saw she was wearing an even thinner cotton nightgown, its delicate folds hanging from my shoulders and pooling around her ankles.

She had never seen it before, never seen this bed or this room or whoever else inhabited it, if the other beds were any indication—None of this was hers.

Welcome to the Sisyphus Manor, Cecilia—

She jumped a mile into the air, exclaiming, "Jesus Christ!" Cecilia wills her heart not to explode as she clutches at her chest, fingernails threatening to tear into the fragile fabric as her head whipped back and forth. "Who said—"

Language—To the beginning of your forever!

Her jaw hung limply and her eyeballs were about to roll right out of their sockets from how wide their lids were burst open. After a few fruitless attempts at coherent thought, let alone speech, all she could say was—

"What the hell?!"