Krat no longer remembered the sound of laughter.

The rain had washed the color from its stones, the Frenzy had stolen the voices from its streets, and what remained was a city of wet ash, broken gears, and the quiet persistence of those who refused to lie down and die. In the narrow gaps between ruin and silence, a single figure still moved—neither fully puppet nor fully human, carrying a light that the darkness had not yet learned how to extinguish.

Somewhere behind boarded windows and locked doors, a handful of survivors still waited for morning. Somewhere deeper, older ambitions continued to turn like the hands of a drowned clock. And somewhere in the rain-slicked veins of the city, paths were about to cross that neither party had planned.

The story of what came next would not be written in the grand halls of the Alchemists or the quiet rooms of Hotel Krat alone. It would be written in the flooded streets, in the choices made under broken awnings, and in the simple, dangerous fact that someone was still standing when the rest of the world had already fallen.

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I don't own any of the characters or settings. Credit goes to the original creators.

Also, this contains my own headcanons, ideas, and settings.