London rain pierced the arched windows like silver needles. Edmund Clare's fingers froze on the yellowed parchment. Gas lamps cast trembling shadows across the title: Forbidden Alchemy. The 37th page's illustration began to bleed—what should've been an ouroboros now morphed into a skull clutching a pocket watch.
As his finger grazed the watch's engravings, the library shuddered. Brass gears rained from the ceiling, forming a counter-clockwise sigil at his feet. The AI's voice pierced his skull:
[Temporal anchor detected. Initiating forced teleportation.]
His final thought: the Latin inscription inside the watch now glowed crimson—"You were never meant to exist between cogs and spells."
Edmund woke to the stench of rotting wood. A rusted airship skeleton pierced the clouds above the floating city of Aetheris, where steam pipes writhed like veins. Three clockwork crows circled, their beaks ejecting poisoned needles: "The Godslayer. Lord Veylan offers three million coins for your skull."
Seeking shelter, Edmund stumbled into a moving circus. Steam-powered griffins gnashed in cages, their backs branded with inverted pentagrams. As the AI forced him to activate a "beginner spell," he knocked over a potion stall. The corrosive liquid revealed shackles engraved with runes: "Property of the Gearwright Guild."
"Use that pea-brain!" The AI's voice shifted to a girl's, projecting a photo of a charred corpse—eerily similar to Edmund. "Lord Veylan's vault holds your past life's diary. And stop tripping over your own boots!"
Next Chapter Teaser
Edmund teams up with the sarcastic mechanist Lucas to steal Codex fragments, only to discover his blood awakens ancient weapons. Lord Veylan's butler delivers a letter written in Edmund's past life's tongue: "The game begins."