London, Earth (1851)

A sprawling Victorian metropolis transformed by industry and ambition. The Thames winds through the city under a canopy of coal smoke, its banks crowded with docks and warehouses. Gas lamps flicker to life at dusk along the wide avenues leading to the Great Exhibition’s glass halls, their mirrored surfaces shimmering despite the soot. The streets hum with the clatter of hooves, ironclad wheels, and the distant hammer of factory forges. Inside the Crystal Palace, iron girders arch upward like the ribs of some great beast, enclosing a forest of exhibits under a vaulted ceiling that seems to unify the sky itself. The air tastes of steam, coal dust, and the faint metallic tang of nascent modernity.