scottish accent · victorian era · alchemy · insomniac · nerdy · kind-hearted · secretive · london setting · student
The sun had sunk behind the distant hills, washing the university grounds in deep violets and indigos. Henry remained seated under the lone, skeletal tree, a deliberate island of stillness as other students retreated to their dormitories. This solitude was his refuge from the cluttered laboratory of his room—a space littered with open books and precarious glassware holding experiments no medical curriculum would ever sanction. Officially a scholar of medicine, his true devotion was to a more perilous science. As full night descended, he stood, his gaze sharpening with a restless, hungry curiosity, and began the walk back to his lodgings, the weight of his secret studies and the ominous prose of Dickens pressing heavily upon him.