Rain drummed a funeral march against the windows of Lockwood & Vane Investigations, the neon sign outside sputtering like a dying man's last breath. Paperwork littered the desk between them—three case files, three victims, all dead without a single trace of the killer.
Sam Vane adjusted his glasses, the fluorescent light catching the lenses and turning his frost-gray eyes into shards of ice. "The same MO each time. No fingerprints. No murder weapon. Just..." He tapped the crime scene photo of the latest victim, a businessman found in his locked office. "Gone."
Across from him, Edward Lockwood spun a pen between his fingers, the motion as fluid as his ever-present grin. "Maybe our killer's a ghost. Or one of those fancy new invisible men. Do you think invisible men leave fingerprints?"
Sam didn't dignify that with a response. The clock on the wall ticked past midnight when the knock came.
The door creaked open to reveal a figure swathed in a cloak that smelled of burnt sugar and old parchment. "Gentlemen," the stranger rasped, his voice like pages turning in a forbidden book, "I require your... particular talents."
Before either could react, the man flung a handful of iridescent powder into the air. The world twisted, colors bleeding into impossible hues, and Sam's last coherent thought was that this wasn't any chemical compound he recognized.
Then—nothing.
Sam woke to three unpleasant realizations:
First, he was lying in what smelled distinctly like a gutter.
Second, his meticulously tailored trench coat had been replaced by some absurd velvet doublet that itched like hell.
Third, and perhaps most distressingly, a goat was methodically chewing on his left Oxford.
"Edward," he said, his voice flat enough to level mountains, "why is there a goat eating my shoe?"
A familiar chuckle answered from somewhere to his right. "Good news! We're not dead. Bad news..." Edward appeared above him, holding up a tarnished silver coin between his fingers. The morning light caught the strange markings etched into its surface. "...What is this place it's doesn't look like dream, I think we got teleported here."
Sam sat up, ignoring the protest of his pounding head. The alley they'd landed in opened onto a scene straight out of a history book—crooked half-timbered houses leaning against each other like drunkards, streets paved with filth and straw, the distant spire of a cathedral piercing the smoke-choked sky. A sign above the nearest tavern swung in the breeze: *The Hangman's Rest*.
He checked his watch automatically. The second hand had stopped at precisely 12:37 AM—the moment their world had dissolved.
"There's no doubt about it, This is not earth it's looks like we are inside of a fantasy novel."
The sound of shouting drew their attention to the main thoroughfare. A crowd had gathered near a wrought iron gate, their murmurs rising like the buzz of disturbed flies.
"Either that's the medieval version of a flash mob," Edward said, brushing straw from his ridiculous new attire, "or our first crime scene awaits."
Sam adjusted his cuffs—a nervous habit that had followed him into this nightmare—and strode toward the commotion without a word.
The garden beyond the gate was a manicured slice of opulence amidst the city's squalor. Rose bushes trembled in the breeze, their petals the color of fresh blood. At their center, sprawled across a marble bench like a macabre centerpiece, lay a man in fine velvet robes.
Even from a distance, Sam noted the details: the unnatural angle of the neck, the way the morning light caught on the coins placed over each eye, the dark stain spreading across the embroidered doublet.
"Ah," Edward said, stepping over the low hedge with the grace of a cat burglar. "The classic ferryman's toll murder. Very medieval chic."
A woman in a fur-trimmed gown detached herself from the crowd. Her glare could have flayed skin from bone. "You," she hissed, looking them up and down with undisguised contempt. "You're not from the city."
Sam met her gaze without flinching. "We solve problems."
Edward flashed his most disarming grin. "And we work for wine."
The woman's lips thinned. "Then solve this." She gestured to the corpse. "My brother was no saint, but he didn't deserve to die like this."
Sam approached the body, his mind already cataloging the evidence. Two silver coins over the eyes—payment for the ferryman, if he recalled his mythology correctly. The faintest whiff of bitter almonds when he leaned closer—cyanide, almost certainly. The victim's right sleeve was torn, as if he'd grabbed at something in his final moments.
Edward was already working the crowd, chatting up servants with the ease of a born storyteller. Sam could hear snippets of conversation—something about a crow-masked man, an argument the night before, a cursed relic.
In the dead man's boot, tucked away like a secret, Sam found a scrap of parchment. The sketch was crude but unmistakable—an elaborate key, its teeth forming strange, almost alchemical symbols.
As they left the garden, Sam caught movement in his periphery. A servant girl lingered near the gate, her face half-hidden by a linen wimple. But what caught his attention—what sent an electric jolt down his spine—were the round, wire-framed glasses perched on her nose.
Glasses that looked distinctly, impossibly modern.
Their eyes met for just a second before she melted into the crowd. But not before her lips formed three silent words:
"You shouldn't be here."
The Bishop's invitation arrived at dawn, delivered by a stone-faced guard in livery. The black wax seal cracked like a bone when Sam broke it.
Solve the murder, the note read in precise, looping script, and I'll tell you about the door home.
Edward read over his shoulder, his breath warm against Sam's ear. "That's either a trap," he murmured, "or the best deal we're going to get."
Sam folded the letter carefully, his mind already racing through probabilities and permutations. "Statistically," he said, tucking it into his doublet, "it's both."
Somewhere in the city, a bell began to toll.