The doors to the Empire Museum closed decades ago, but in the ochre glow of the pyrebeetle lanterns, the exhibits still stare and occasionally move. Fueled by the sweat of the low-caste factory workers, the city of Brine hovers over the edge of a thousand, thousand millwheels fueled by the twice-daily cascade of tidal waters. In Brine, even death cannot end toil. The carcasses of horses blankly pull the cabs of the wealthy. Dead workers lurch in the factories, fueling the ever-growing Empire. With no more land to claim, the puppet queen has decreed another kind of expansion: a darker path into the lands Between. But in the shadow of Empire’s expansion, this new land’s strange inhabitants stare hatefully out at the invaders. Slowly, they begin to step out of the reflections, out of the smog-shrouded alleys. Fighting back. And in the museum, dead things begin to stir once more.