METHOD OF MADNESS ━ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐛𝐲 ¹ (Under editing)

𝒾. 𝒪𝓃𝑒: broken shell

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : neptune - sleeping at last

⇄ ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ ↻

i. one: ❝Broken Shell❞

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Birmingham, England

IN THE BLEAK WINTER OF 1919, five years had passed since the war's shadow first darkened the land, and still the streets of Birmingham had not recovered. The air was thick with ghosts—men without legs or eyes begging in doorways, widows swaddled in black, children with hollow bellies. It was a season of fractured souls.

For Marianna James, those years had carved themselves into her bones. Five long winters since her brother Mal, her fierce protector, marched off with a grin too bright to survive the mud. Three years since the letter came—ink bleeding her ruin. Twenty-four bullets, twenty-four holes, twenty-four candles snuffed at once, leaving her with a grief that burned long after the fire was out. He died at twenty-four, and she carried the cruel symmetry like a wound stitched into her skin.

With her parents gone and her world torn apart, she was left with her aunt, Tia, a widow with hard hands and steady eyes, who gave Marianna shelter but not reprieve. Even in safety, she heard the whispers—the low hiss of spirits pressing against her skull, reminding her of the debts grief demands.

And now she waited. The station was alive with contradictions—joy and terror tangled in every face. Wives clutching children to their skirts, men lighting cigarettes with shaking hands, the scent of coal and perfume and fear all woven into the cold. Behind every cry of celebration there lurked suspicion: what if he comes back different? What if he comes back at all?

"Mari, there's Pol." Tia murmured, touching her arm with gentleness that Marianna half-despised. Her eyes flicked toward Polly Gray, Ada Shelby, and little Finn, their faces lit with expectation.

Marianna only shrugged, she refused to let the Shelby warmth touch her, refused to look like she needed it. Once, her hazel eyes were a flame; now they held the dull glint of a dying ember, a woman hollowed out but too proud to let anyone see the ashes.

Polly's gaze found her anyway, softening in recognition of pain too familiar. Marianna didn't thank her for it. Pity was poison.

"How are you, love?" Tia asked Ada, voice warm, her words spilling into the cold space between them.

Ada's fingers twisted as she forced a smile. "I truly don't know. Will they ever be the same?"

Marianna's lips curled—not a smile, but something sharp. Her voice slipped into the air like smoke, soft but cutting, "No one comes back the same. It's either a rotting corpse in the paper, or a breathing body with a broken soul rattling inside it."

Ada flinched; Polly did not. Marianna liked that. She liked how her words unsettled and settled in equal measure, how she could wound and still sound like a saint. That was her gift.