But after the winter of 1867, the city began to breathe differently —

as though its every shadow remembered her name.

She was called the Queen of Crows.

A woman of midnight — unseen, untouchable, and unloved.

They said she walked the streets carrying a lantern that burned without flame,

and that wherever its light fell, something… or someone… died.

Mothers warned their sons not to steal.

Fathers whispered prayers before crossing the bridge at night.

Because if the crows cried three times before dawn,

someone’s sins were about to be collected.

No one ever saw her face.

No one ever lived to tell her story.

But there are letters — old, brittle, written in trembling hands —

claiming she was once a girl who loved too deeply and lost too cruelly.

That she was cursed by a man whose soul burned brighter than any dragon’s fire.

And that every crow in London still waits for the day she will rise again.

For in every shadow, in every flutter of black wings,

there is a whisper:

> “The Queen never dies.

She only forgets who she was.”