The night felt interminable, stretching far beyond the measure of its hours. Sleep was a shallow, fractured thing. Each time my eyes closed, fractured images from Jason's sterile office and Claus's opulent marble halls surged forward, overlapping and bleeding into one another until they dissolved into pure nonsense. When the first grey light of dawn finally scraped across the sky, I rose. There was a certain numb clarity that comes from having absolutely nothing left to lose.
A decision crystallized in the emptiness: if I could not simply disappear, I would at least continue to move. Action, no matter how seemingly futile, was infinitely preferable to the slow, psychological rot of complete stillness.
My most immediate requirement was currency. Capital, as the merchants here would term it. A foundation. Without it, I could not secure nourishment, nor shelter, nor even maintain the faintest pretense of existing within this society.
Yet, even more than coin, I required information. Knowledge. If this world was unwilling to offer me explanations willingly, then I would be forced to claw its secrets from paper and ink myself.
---
The Town of Grentwallow
Grentwallow revealed itself to be significantly larger than my initial impressions suggested. Its narrow alleyways branched out like a complex system of arteries, feeding into broader boulevards where carriages, adorned with wheels etched with softly glowing stabilizer runes, roared past. The air perpetually carried the layered scents of burning coal and sea salt, as if the town itself were both burning and bleeding simultaneously. The architecture was dominated by tall structures of dark brick, bound together by skeletal iron beams that showed signs of rust from the persistent, damp sea wind. Windows were narrow slits, balconies were cramped iron cages, and every available surface seemed choked with signs denoting guild houses, commercial establishments, and inns.
At the town's geographical and symbolic heart stood a clocktower—a skeletal construction of iron and stone. Its four faces glowed faintly with intricate runes that tracked the passage of time even throughout the night. Each hour, it tolled with a deep, hollow clang that felt less like a measure of life's progress and more like a grim countdown to some unnamed conclusion.
Beyond the town's confines lay the region known as the Reach—a kingdom historically carved out by its rivers, mines, and established trade routes. I learned the Reach was but one of five provinces united under the Crown of Avyss, a monarchy often described as ancient yet brittle. The nobility still technically owned the land, but the powerful guilds controlled all meaningful work, and the religious orders held a monopoly on fear. Together, these three forces kept the populace tethered to an existence that bore the superficial appearance of progress, yet carried the unmistakable odor of servitude.
The structure felt hauntingly familiar. It was not so different from the Klid Empire. It was not so different from Earth.
---
The Economics of Survival
My first genuine lesson in this new reality concerned its currency. The lowest denomination was the copper shard,a square coin stamped with the crest of the Crown. Ten of these shards constituted a silver mark, a heavier, round coin that produced a satisfying clink. Twenty silver marks equaled one gold crown, the preferred currency of merchants and the lower nobility. Beyond that, mentioned only in whispers, were platinum seals, used for significant transactions like land purchases or guild charters.
A simple loaf of bread cost three copper shards. A single night in the most modest boarding house required twelve. I possessed enough coin for neither necessity. My only tangible assets were the book I carried under my arm and the thin, desperate resolve that I might somehow barter the contents of my mind for basic survival.
---
The Bookshop: Harrow & Quill
The shop was situated near the edge of the main square, wedged tightly between a tailor's shop and an apothecary. Its sign read simply: Harrow & Quill. A layer of dust smudged its windows, but through the glass, I could make out the silhouettes of shelves rising like walls, packed tight with volumes. The sight alone provided a strange sense of stability. If there was any place in this unfamiliar town where I might find a foothold, it was among forgotten words and silent knowledge.
I pushed the heavy wooden door open. A small bell chimed overhead, its sound faint and brittle.
The atmosphere inside was immediate and overwhelming: the rich scent of drying ink, the dry smell of ancient paper dust, the deep aroma of aged leather. The very air felt heavy, as if it were saturated with the exhaled breaths of readers long deceased.
Behind a tall counter cluttered with papers and sealing wax sat a man as thin and dry as the parchment he sold. A pair of spectacles was perched precariously on his crooked nose. He looked up slowly, his eyes remarkably sharp and alert despite the sagging, weary skin surrounding them.
"A customer?" he inquired, his voice a dry rustle.
"No," I replied, my own voice low. "A prospective worker."
His eyebrows twitched slightly upward. "A worker? Explain yourself."
"I am literate. I can sort and organize. I can maintain silence and discretion." I stated.
It was the final part of my statement that truly captured his attention. He studied me in a prolonged silence, so complete I could feel the dust particles settling on my skin. Finally, he spoke.
"Do you have a name?"
"Clauson." The syllables felt foreign and unfamiliar in my mouth, yet I clung to them as the only identity I had left.
"Clauson," he repeated, as if tasting the word itself. "You have the appearance of someone who might simply vanish if I were to turn my back for a moment."
"Then I would be unlikely to disturb your customers or draw undue attention. Is that not a desirable quality in a shop such as this?"
A dry, rasping chuckle escaped his throat. "Perhaps there is some truth to that." He tapped a finger on a large, open ledger dominating his desk. "The task is in the back room. You will sort and index a collection of historical texts. There will be no payment until you have demonstrated you are not a common thief. If you survive three days of satisfactory work, you will receive three silver marks."
Three marks. It was enough for food, and perhaps a single night's shelter. More importantly, it was compensation that would grant me access to these very shelves.
I gave a single, firm nod. "I accept the terms."
---
The Shop Owner's Perspective (Elbert's POV)
The man who gave his name as Clauson was an unsettling specimen. He entered the shop not with the hesitant shuffle of a browser, but with the grim resolve of someone stepping onto a gallows. His clothes were decent but showed signs of hard travel, and his hands, though clean, were pale and strangely delicate for someone seeking manual labor. Yet it was his eyes that were most telling—they held a hollow, fractured quality, like windows into a house that had been long abandoned after a fire. He claimed a capacity for silence, and indeed, he seemed to embody it; he was a walking void, a man who absorbed sound and light rather than reflecting it. His offer to work was desperation thinly veiled as proposition. But desperation could be useful. It made a man compliant. It made him grateful for scraps. And if he possessed even half the literacy he claimed, he might actually make a dent in the chaotic morass of the back room. The three marks were a gamble, but a small one. If he stole a book, he would be easily caught. If he worked, he might prove marginally useful. In a town like Grentwallow, one learned to weigh people not by their potential, but by their immediate utility. This one, this Clauson, reeked of utility born from despair.
---
The Back Room and a Nascent Resolve
The work assigned was simple, almost insultingly menial. Towers of books were piled high, shrouded in a thick blanket of dust, their bindings frayed and loose. My task was merely to arrange them by title, author, and subject matter. Yet, as my fingers brushed against the worn spines, the quantum chip embedded in my skull began to stir from its dormancy. It whispered silent correlations: this script shared structural similarities with early Germanic glyphs; that particular rune bore a startling resemblance to thermodynamic notations from my old world; a third doctrine aligned with eerie precision against half-remembered Enlightenment treatises.
It was knowledge layered upon knowledge, the weight of it pressing against my consciousness like a physical iron band. A part of me wanted to simply collapse under the immense, crushing pressure of it all. Instead, I continued to sort, one book after another.
Here, in the dim, dust-choked silence of a forgotten bookshop's back room, I tasted my first, faint hint of advantage. It was not talent. It was not strength or noble birth. It was sheer, accumulated knowledge, cross-referenced across two lifetimes and a database I had never earned.
I had lived once as Jason, and I had failed. I had lived once as Claus, and I had failed. But now, merged, fractured, and emptied, I possessed something neither of them had: a presence so negligible it rendered me effectively invisible, and a vault of knowledge that no one in this world could possibly suspect.
It was not much. It was a pathetic foundation upon which to build anything. But it was,undeniably, more than nothing.
A resolve hardened within me, cold and sharp. This would be my beginning. I would learn the rules of this world—its currents, its politics, its magic—from the inside of this dusty sanctuary. I would use the chip's data not as a crutch, but as a decoder, a key to understanding the underlying structures of this place. I would become a student of silence and observation. I would absorb everything. And then, perhaps, I would cease to be nothing.
---
Reflections at Dusk
When the light outside the dusty window began to soften into dusk, the old man appeared in the doorway of the back room.
"You remained. You worked," he stated, his tone flat and devoid of praise.
"I did," I confirmed.
"You will return tomorrow."
"I will."
He offered a single, curt nod before vanishing back into the shadowy recesses of the shop, leaving me alone once more with the dust and the deepening silence.
I sat for a moment amongst the sorted piles, watching the lamplight from the main shop tremble against the spines of the books. My body ached, though not from the physical labor. The ache was born from the relentless, churning effort of thought.
For the first time since awakening on that forest floor, I felt the faintest sensation approximating direction. It was not hope—I would not insult my own intelligence by labeling it with so cheap a word. But it was direction. A place to stand, however precarious, while I slowly learned the contours of the world into which I had fallen.
The kingdom of Avyss did not know me. The powerful guilds did not see me. The church had no record of my birth or existence.
This invisibility was my starting capital. And with it,however meager it might be, I would begin.