The smell of ozone and scorched metal was the last thing I remembered.
In my world—the world of grease-stained coveralls and high-stakes underground rings—I was two things: a master mechanical engineer and a lethal striker. I had spent my final moments leaning over a prototype turbine that theoretically shouldn't have exploded. Theoretically.
But as the pressure valve failed and the white light swallowed me whole, my only coherent thought wasn't a prayer. It was: Dammit, the intake manifold was two millimeters off.
Then, silence.
The silence didn't last. It was replaced by a dull, rhythmic thudding and a cloying, suffocating scent of lavender and old dust.
My eyes snapped open, but the world didn't make sense. Instead of the industrial fluorescent lights of my workshop, I was staring at a vaulted ceiling made of dark oak and silver filigree.
"Where am I? Hospital? No... this feels too heavy. Too quiet." She thought.
She tried to sit up, and a white-hot spike of vertigo slammed into my skull. A flood of images that weren't her's—memories that felt like grainy, muted films—rushed through her mind.
She saw a girl. She had her face, but her eyes were always cast down. She saw a massive, towering man with a beard like frosted iron—her father, the Duke of Vane-Crest. She felt her heart hammer against her ribs every time someone raised their voice. She felt the stinging shame of her cousins calling her "The Silent Soot-Girl" because she preferred the drafty libraries of the North to the glittering ballrooms of the South.
Priscilla Vane-Crest. The useless daughter of the Industrial North.
"Is she finally awake?"
The voice was cold, clinical, and sounded like a scalpel sliding across glass. She turned her head, squinting against the dim light of the hearth.
A man stood by the window. He was tall, dressed in a high-collared coat of midnight blue and silver fur. He held a leather-bound notebook in one hand and a silver pocket watch in the other. His eyes—sharp, icy blue, and terrifyingly intelligent—were fixed on me.
"This was Alistair. My... no, Priscilla's eldest brother. The world's leading neurologist." She thought.
"Your heart rate spiked three minutes ago," Alistair said, stepping closer. He didn't reach out to touch her forehead or offer a hand. He just watched. "The servants said you fainted during the Uncle's visit. A 'vasovagal syncope' brought on by emotional distress. Typical."
Typical? Her inner engineer bristled. "You're looking at a structural failure and calling it 'typical' without checking the foundation? "
"I..." She started to speak, but her throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper.
"Don't force it," Alistair dismissed, scribbling something in his book. "The tremor in your hands has increased by 15% since your last 'episode.' If your neural pathways continue to degrade under the slightest pressure, Father will have no choice but to send you to the sanitarium in Veridia. You are a Vane-Crest, Priscilla. Even if you are a broken gear, you are expected to stay in the machine."
He turned on his heel and walked out, the heavy oak door thudding shut behind him.
She laid back against the silk pillows, her breath coming in shallow hitches. Her mind was racing. "I wasn't in my workshop. I wasn't in my body. I was in a world that looked like a steampunk fever dream—a place called Severa, where steam engines were just beginning to roar and "Old Magic" still haunted the mountains."
_
Okay. Think, Priscilla. Analyze the variables.
1. The Body: Weak. Malnourished. Zero muscle memory for combat. The "Old Priscilla" was a victim of her own anxiety.
2. The Environment: Hostile. I'm surrounded by "relatives" who view me as a defect and a brother who wants to biopsy my brain.
3. The Assets: I have the memories of a 21st-century engineer and the soul of a fighter who once broke a man's ribs for looking at her wrong.
_
She looked at her hands. They were pale and trembling. She hated them.
Vasovagal syncope? Emotional distress? I let out a dry, jagged laugh that sounded nothing like the girl Alistair knew. In my old life, I survived on caffeine, spite, and the sheer will to prove every man in the industry wrong. If this world wanted a "broken gear," they were going to be disappointed.
She forced myself out of the bed. Her legs wobbled, but she gripped the bedpost until her knuckles turned white. She dragged herself to the full-length mirror in the corner.
The girl in the glass was beautiful, with hair the color of midnight and eyes like molten gold, but she looked like a ghost. She leaned in close, staring into her own pupils. The fear was gone. In its place was a cold, calculating spark.
"Priscilla is dead," she whispered, the words feeling like a vow. "And if this world thinks it can grind me down, it's about to find out what happens when you put a diamond in the gears."
She reached out and grabbed a heavy silver hairbrush from the vanity. She didn't brush her hair. She weighed it in her hand, testing the balance, feeling the density of the metal.
"I need a forge. I need a gym. And I need to make sure Alistair stays the hell away from my head until I'm ready to bite."
The North was known for its iron, its steam, and its cold. It was time for the "Silent Daughter" to become the loudest thing in the Empire.
[ End chapter 1 ]