In this world, the Middle Ages were not dark, but bloody. In this world, people froze in horror every time when the sky was darkened by the wings of the fallen. In this world, science returned freedom to humanity, and the Second Empire, the empire of people, stretched from ocean to ocean. Combat steamers ply the waters of the seas, armored trains wait on sidings, and army airships soar in the skies, but still the balance hangs literally by a thread. The era of steam is leaving, the era of all-good electricity is just taking off, so even the smallest thing can throw the world into the abyss of chaos. And who knows if Leopold Orso, detective constable of the metropolitan police, will become such a “small thing”? He belongs to the new elite of the empire - the illustrious, but the talent inherited from his ancestors is too gloomy to hope for a long, quiet life. Leopold is endowed with the gift of turning other people's fears into reality, and fear is an incomparably more dangerous thing than six-barreled machine guns, backpack flamethrowers and hordes of people from the underworld, all put together.