The Thirteenth Tenant
Marlow Reed opens his eyes on a cold metal table. Stitches run down his chest. A tag hangs from his ankle like he’s a dead man.
He can’t remember his name. The air smells sharp—chemicals and old blood.
Under his hand lies a broken pocket watch. It has thirteen hours. The black hand moves backward.
The system isn’t kind. It doesn’t explain. No guides, no points, no help.
Instead, it burns tasks into walls, floors, and Marlow’s mind.
His first order: find a room for the thing behind the wallpaper before 1:13.
If he fails, it will count every bone in his body.
The city, Lornwick, is falling apart. Gaslights flicker over cracked streets. Rusty lifts creak inside crumbling towers. Ancient gods watch from the dark edges of reality.
Magic is real—but silent, dangerous, and costly. It eats your mind. The powerful hide strange disasters with forms and files.
Meanwhile, haunted houses, shadow thieves, ghost nurses, sunken people, and trams that shouldn’t exist feed on the lost parts of town.
Marlow’s only safe place is Harrow & Venn Precision Works—a broken watch factory, long forgotten.
Every time he survives a mission, he traps a ghost or anomaly inside.
Each one becomes a tool—and a threat.
Every new tenant brings him closer to understanding the watch, the city, and the body he now wears.
But the factory has only thirteen rooms. Twelve might keep the outside horrors at bay.
The thirteenth stays empty.
It’s waiting for someone.
Maybe for him.