by Headless
Something fell from the sky and crawled inside Florence Bannerman. She doesn't remember it. She was unconscious at the time—tied up, thrown from a carriage by bandits, lying in a crater that used to be the Old King's Road. By the time she woke up, the thing had already settled in. Fused to her blood. Gone quiet. Now her skin turns to iron when she's scared, bullets flatten against her chest, and the government's magic detectors can't see a thing. Florence didn't come to Dunwick to be a weapon. She came to be a doctor. She scraped through three rounds of entrance exams, kissed her village goodbye, and swore she'd never watch anyone die the way her parents did. All she wants is to learn medicine, keep her head down, and not draw attention. She is failing spectacularly at that last part. It doesn't help that her only friend, Alice, is a runaway noble with pyromancy and a gambling problem, her brother is a decorated mage-hunter who can't detect a secret if it's living in his sister, and somewhere in the smoke and gaslight of the city, someone is already looking for the girl who survived the crater. WHAT TO EXPECT - Gaslamp fantasy with a buried sci-fi hook: Victorian setting with a tiered magic system, alien technology and a protagonist caught between them - Multiple POVs: Two leads with their own arcs, their own dangers, and mysteries that intersect in ways neither of them expects - No system. No stats. Progression comes through discovery, crisis and figuring out what you are the hard way -Characters with their own gravity: The side cast has secrets, ambitions, and problems that don't wait for the main plot to give them permission -Slow-burn mysteries with long fuses: Cults, conspiracies, and schemes layered deep enough that the real shape of the story won't be obvious for a while. But the threads are always weaving
