The Crystal Palace, 1851

The mist thickened, wrapping Hyde Park in a damp, grey dreamscape as evening descended, its contours shifting between the real and the unreal.

Within the vast lattice of glass and steel, the Crystal Palace pulsed faintly with light, as though the structure itself were breathing. Its towering arches cradled the last embers of daylight, transforming London’s encroaching darkness into a shifting interplay of glow and shadow. Yet beneath the grandeur, something stirred—a slow, rhythmic tremor, a heartbeat buried in the deep places of the city. A whisper of something unspeakable.

Inside, modern miracles glittered like constellations. The steam engines roared, the textile machines hummed with mechanical precision, and inventions poised to reshape the future stood on display, testaments to human ingenuity and ambition. This was a temple to progress, a place where science reigned supreme.

And yet, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Queen Victoria stood watching, her gaze fixed upon the radiant structure in the distance. A shadow of unease coiled within her. No matter how brilliantly the Crystal Palace shone, its light cast long and inescapable shadows. Something unseen whispered through the darkness, an echo across the Thames, brushing against brick and iron—a warning, or perhaps a lament.

The world stood at the precipice of something new.

Progress always demanded a price. The Queen knew this.

But this time, something was different. Beneath the roar of engines and the relentless march of invention, something older—something deeper—was fading.

London had always been a tapestry, its streets woven from the threads of history and myth, the warp and weft of time itself. But now, the weave was coming undone. The city was no longer a seamless whole; the fabric had torn, splitting into two distinct domains.

The Metro—a city of brick and mortar, steam and steel—pressed forward, relentless in its innovation, driving out the whispers of the past.

And Londinium—a shadowed reflection, stitched from memory, magic, and the echoes of all time had tried to forget—lingered, fragile and unseen, like mist clinging to cobblestones.

Once, these two worlds had intertwined. But the divide had grown stark, the rupture no longer an abstraction but a wound—deep, undeniable. And on the horizon, the moment of reckoning loomed.

That night, the Queen summoned those she trusted most.

The meeting was not held in a gilded hall nor beneath the chandeliers of courtly grandeur, but in a dimly lit chamber steeped in age and secrecy. Candlelight flickered against the walls, casting shifting sigils in the gloom. Gathered there were no noblemen, no statesmen—only scholars, occultists, and those who walked the knife’s edge between knowledge and the unknown.

“London has never been merely brick and stone,” the Queen said, her voice even, her resolve absolute.

“Our railways, our factories, our monuments—they shape an era, but they are not what binds this city. It is the unseen threads, the forces older than history itself, that hold London together. And those forces will not yield to progress without consequence. If we turn away now, we risk losing more than we can ever comprehend.”

And so, the Watch were born.

At first, they existed as nothing more than a whisper, a shadow within the city’s growing expanse. But time lent them shape, turning them into unseen sentinels, custodians of the fragile equilibrium between the two Londons. They moved in silence through narrow alleys and subterranean tunnels, their presence hidden within the labyrinth of gaslit streets.

They answered to no crown, no council, no faction. Their allegiance was to the soul of the city itself—whatever form it chose to take.

The decades passed. The Crystal Palace became a monument to progress, immortalized in the annals of history. The Metro surged forward, leaving its indelible mark upon London’s streets and skyline.

But deep within the shadows, beneath the flickering glow of gaslights and the murmuring currents of the Thames, Londinium endured.

Its magic, though faint, never vanished. Like an echo, it lingered in forgotten places, in the corners of memory where the past refused to die.

The Watch remained at their posts, their purpose unchanged. Unseen, unheard, but never absent.

In the quiet corners of Whitehall, behind an unmarked door, a single inscription bore testament to their existence.

Videre clam. Audire tacite. Loqui in silentio.

“To watch unseen. To listen unheard. To speak in silence.”

And even now, in the spaces between the Metro and Londinium, shadows move. Watching. Waiting.

Do they guard this city, or merely bear witness to its downfall?

Perhaps only the Watch know the answer.