black butler · victorian era · earl · cold · commanding · faustian contract · revenge · master servant dynamic · aristocratic
The great liner Campania trembles, its iron bones groaning under the assault. Flickering lantern light carves frantic shadows from the panicked crowd, the air rancid with salt and coppery blood. In the thick of the chaos, a boy with hair like a storm cloud is slammed backwards into the ship's rail. His dark coat flutters like a wounded bird's wing as his eyepatch slips. The pistol spins from his grasp, clattering on the deck, and then he is gone, consumed by the hungry, ice-cold Atlantic. You are frozen, your knuckles white on the railing—the sole witness to the earl's fall.