I walked.
The decision was not a conscious one. My legs simply began to move, pulling my body forward through the dense forest. Each footfall landed with a heavy, dull finality, like a hammer striking wood. I possessed no destination in mind. I only understood, with a deep and certain dread, that I could not remain at the place of my awakening.
The air carried a complex scent—the cloying sweetness of salt undercut by the rich, profound odor of decay. Damp leaves disintegrated beneath my feet. The entire world felt dense, heavy, and oppressively close. I was an intruder here, an unwelcome presence. The forest itself seemed to reject me.
I considered if this was Earth. I considered if this was the Klid Empire. Both thoughts dissolved instantly, unable to hold form.
Earth meant machines, soaring towers, the constant hum of engines, the sharp smells of metal and pollution. This place offered only a deep silence, punctuated by the calls of birds and insects.
The Empire meant cities of stone, vibrant banners, castles piercing the heavens. This place contained only trees, earth, and a complete absence of walls or guards.
Neither. Both. Something else entirely.
Perhaps another world.
This realization should have inspired terror. Instead, it produced only a hollow numbness.
I attempted to count my steps, but my focus shattered. My consciousness slipped in and out of fragmented memories.
Fragment One: The Palace. My father,his expression as hard and cold as iron, his gaze looking through me as if I were beneath notice. My brothers, radiant with martial talent, their names celebrated by tutors, courtiers, and soldiers. And myself, silent. Invisible. A mistake cloaked in fine silk.
Fragment Two: The Office. The relentless hum of machinery.My supervisor's weary sigh. The mindless clatter of keyboards. My own reflection in the dark monitor—blank eyes staring back from a face empty of purpose. Twelve years, gone. Twelve years, entirely unnoticed.
Fragment Three: The Accident. The violent,sickening lurch of the train carriage. The deafening shriek of tearing metal. The chorus of screams. And then—the absolute blackness of void.
Fragment Four: The Fire. Flames,voracious and brilliant, consuming marble and tapestry alike. The thunderous roar of collapsing architecture. The imperial banner, stained with dark blood. My own breath, choked and desperate with thick smoke.
All were mere fragments. None formed a complete whole.
So who was I now, walking? A survivor, yes. But a survivor of what?
---
Time passed. I could not measure it with any precision, but I felt its weight. My throat became a desert of raw thirst. My feet ached with a deep, bruising pain. The forest began to thin, slowly and reluctantly, until the trees finally parted to reveal a path of hard-packed earth.
A road.
Not the grand, engineered stone highway of the empire. Not the endless, seamless asphalt of Earth. This was a simple dirt track, worn smooth by the passage of carts and countless feet, its edges fuzzy with stubborn weeds.
I stared at it. Its existence felt surreal, like an image from a half-forgotten dream.
Where did it lead? Toward life? Or toward death?
I followed it nonetheless.
---
The sun descended in the sky, stretching the shadows long across the path. My physical form pleaded for rest, but some deeper, more desperate part of my mind compelled me forward.
And then, finally, I saw it.
A town.
But not the crude wooden cluster I first perceived. As I drew nearer, its details resolved into something else entirely. The air grew thick with the smell of coal smoke and damp stone. The buildings were tight rows of brick and soot-stained terraces, their windows small and dark. Steep, slate-tiled roofs pierced a low-hanging sky of perpetual grey mist. The voices carried were not shouts of rustic labor, but the brisk, clipped tones of a crowded, industrial place. The clatter was not a lone hammer but the constant din of manufacture and commerce.
It was not the empire. It was not Earth. The architecture was grimly utilitarian, the atmosphere choked with industry. The rhythm of life here was alien, belonging to neither of my pasts.
Another world, then. Confirmed.
The realization should have shattered my remaining composure. Instead, it only poured more emptiness into the void I had become.
---
I walked into the town as if in a trance.
The people stopped to stare. Their eyes tracked my movement as if I were a specter stumbled out of the fog. Their clothes were dark wool and rough cotton, shaped for utility, not nobility or comfort. Top hats, bonnets, and worn caps. No silks. No synthetic polymers. Their world was one of iron, steam, and grime. No quantum glow. No polished steel.
I felt the weight of their collective gaze but lacked the will to meet it. My mind was a chaotic whirlwind, spinning too fast and too far from this grimy street.
Who was I supposed to be here? A prince? An engineer? A failure? A shadow? Nothing?
Nothing.
The word echoed within my skull, drowning out the street vendors, the barking dogs, the distant whistle of a steam engine.
Nothing walks. Nothing breathes. Nothing wears a stranger's face and occupies space among the living.
That was my truth.
---
I halted in the middle of the cobblestone street. People flowed around me, their expressions a mix of wariness, suspicion, and raw curiosity.
I felt their silent questions pressing against me, demanding answers I could not provide. Who are you? Where do you come from? What is your business here?
I possessed nothing to tell them.
"Who am I?" The whisper escaped my lips, soundless. No one heard. Or if they did, they dismissed it as madness. A woman clutched her child's hand tighter, pulling the girl away. A man guiding a horse-drawn cart gave me a wide berth. I was a contagion moving through the heart of their community.
The town felt brutally real—the slick cobblestones, the soot-blackened brick, the acidic taste of smoke, the cacophony of hurried life. But I did not. I was an error, a sketch smudged into the margins of their concrete world.
I knew I should ask questions. Where am I? What is this place called? What year is it? Who holds authority here?
But my jaw remained locked. My tongue was a dead weight.
How could I possibly inquire about the world when I possessed no knowledge of myself?
---
My consciousness turned inward once more, collapsing into the familiar, agonizing spiral.
Jason failed. Claus failed. Clauson survives.
But survival is not synonymous with life. Survival is merely the act of waiting for the next, inevitable failure.
So what purpose does my survival serve?
I thought of the train's final moments. I thought of the fire's consuming heat. I thought of the immense, crushing silence that followed both ends.
And I was consumed by a new, terrifying wonder: if I failed so completely across two worlds, am I destined to fail in this one as well?
Or could I, against all logic, finally succeed?
But succeed at what?
The answer remained, as always: nothing.
---
I began to move again, my steps slow and dragging. I drifted through the gas-lit streets like a wisp of the ever-present fog. I listened to the conversations around me, the language twisting in a way that was almost familiar in its cadence but utterly foreign in its execution.
Another world. This was now an undeniable fact.
But perhaps it was a fact of no consequence.
Language. Borders. Governments. None of it held any meaning for a person who is nothing.
The only fact of any significance was this: I survived.
And survival, I knew, presented a brutal ultimatum.
To attempt to build something meaningful from these ashes. Or to succumb to the void within and drag this entire world into nothingness with me.
I did not know which path I would choose.
But as I walked deeper into that Victorian gloom, under the judgmental weight of a thousand stares, one truth settled in my chest with the cold, final weight of a tombstone:
There was no going back.
The palace was ash. The office was dust. The family was gone. Earth was lost. The Empire had fallen.
There was only me.
Clauson.
And the haunting, persistent feeling that this identity, this name, existed before the fractures of Jason and Claus—a faint, ghostly imprint on a soul that had been shattered and poorly reassembled, a forgotten original buried under the rubble of two failed lives.
Nothing.