Century is not a hundred years, 5,200 weeks, or anything to do with the passing of time. It is a mansion, a home and a prison. Here time stands still.
It is permanently winter, and icy winds blow through the rooms and corridors of Century. There is no warm light here because the sky is always dark and cloudy. Century is a forbidding place and the people who live here know nothing of bright sunshine, coloured flowers or warming sun. The inhabitants of Century are as frozen as the air that surrounds them.
Century is a huge, darkened mansion, home to the Verga family. This once grand house stands in the middle of dying gardens and parklands, overlooking a sombre, still lake. Century was once majestic and full of noise, movement and life, but now the house is weighed down by winter and decay.
All the servants left long ago. The only inhabitants are the solemn widower Trajan and his two young daughters. A housekeeper and a governess look after the girls and stop them asking questions.
Mercy and her younger sister Charity accept their strange life at Century without thinking about the world outside. They wake at night, sleep during the day and rarely see their widowed father.
The housekeeper and the governess are distant relatives of Trajan, but they never talk about family history or the events that brought Trajan to Century. And no one ever talks about the girls' mother. She is dead and forgotten.
One day, Mercy finds a white flower on her pillow when she wakes up. Where has it come from and who has put it there? Then she sees the face of a dead woman under the frozen surface of the lake. She is drawn to a ruined church in the grounds and there she meets a mysterious stranger who says his name is Claudius. He has contacted Mercy to tell her it is time for her to investigate the secrets that have trapped her in Century.