Lumo
The ember‑lit guild hall thrummed with life, its vaulted ceiling a lattice of iron ribs that caught the glow of countless looms. Each loom stood like a patient beast, its wooden frame blackened by years of heat, its spindle wheels turning in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. The air was thick with the scent of hot coal and freshly spun wool, a warm perfume that clung to skin and lingered in the breath of every apprentice who passed through the great doors.
The world below had long since become a memory—a patchwork of rusted rails, cracked highways, and cities that whispered their own demise into the wind. Above it all, suspended on currents of ionized vapor and ancient magnetic fields, drifted a place few had ever seen and fewer still believed could exist: the City of Aetheria.
In a fog‑shrouded town perched on the edge of a restless sea, there lived an old clockmaker named Elias. His shop was a narrow, timber‑walled place where the scent of oil and polished brass mingled with the distant smell of salt. Inside, clocks of every shape ticked in unison—grandfather clocks with pendulums that swayed like ship masts, pocket watches that glimmered like moonlit waves, and tiny mantel clocks that chimed with the soft rustle of seagull wings.