The lecture hall smelled faintly of old carpet and burnt coffee. Jay sat near the back, hood pulled low, notebook open but empty. The professor's voice droned about comparative economic systems, syllables tumbling in a monotone. Pens scratched, keyboards clicked, and Jay let it all blur into a background hum. He wasn't here to learn—not really. He was here because the world demanded he sit somewhere, do something, tick boxes until the years went by.
Instead, he sketched towers and mountains in the margins, lines bleeding into each other until the page was more fantasy map than lecture notes. His wrist moved automatically, shading a cliff face, tracing rivers that cut into valleys. He imagined the air up there—thin, cold, unpolluted. A place where the horizon stretched open, where things mattered.
A tap of his pen against the desk set its own rhythm, a steady beat that drowned out the professor's voice. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound wasn't just the pen anymore—it was rain, dripping steadily on stone. He blinked. The lecture hall light flickered in his vision, bending into a stormcloud glow. Ozone filled his nose, sharp and metallic.
He closed his eyes for just a second, trying to reset. When he opened them again, his notebook wasn't paper anymore. It was flat rock, slick with water. His pen was gone. In its place, grass bent low under the weight of rain. The rows of students dissolved into mist, the drone of the professor's voice fading until it was only wind and thunder.
Jay staggered to his feet. The chair was gone. The classroom gone. He was crouched on a moor, soaked through, the sky swollen with bruised clouds. His pulse stumbled in his throat. Usually his daydreams had edges—walls he could feel if he pressed too hard. This time there were none. Every detail was sharp, unforgiving. The chill crept down his arms, the smell of wet soil filled his lungs, and when he dug his nails into his palm, the sting made him wince.
He turned in place, trying to anchor himself. The land stretched in all directions, rolling grass broken by patches of stone and shallow pools collecting rain. The wind carried the distant smell of pine smoke, but he saw no village. The storm pounded down in sheets, soaking his hoodie until it clung like ice. He searched frantically for cover and spotted an outcrop of rock, just high enough to form a hollow. He stumbled toward it, boots slipping in mud, and crouched inside.
The space gave no warmth, but at least it cut the rain. He pressed his back against the stone and shivered. For a while he stayed there, waiting for the illusion to break. He told himself he would wake up in the lecture hall, the professor still droning, his doodles waiting. But the rain continued. His breath fogged in front of him. His burned palm throbbed where he'd pinched himself. Nothing snapped away.
When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed it: the cairn rising out of the mist not far from his shelter. Stones stacked with impossible balance, slick and glistening, higher than a man. At its base lay something dark and solid. Curiosity tugged at him stronger than fear. He wiped rain from his face and stepped back out into the storm.
The cairn loomed larger as he approached. The stones hummed faintly under the wind, as though each one carried a tone that only together made sense. At the base rested a book. Leather warped and cracked, edges frayed, but somehow untouched by the storm. Not a drop of rain marred its surface. He frowned, glancing up at the sky, then back at the book. Everything around it was drenched. The ground was mud. And yet it sat there dry, waiting.
Jay crouched. His fingers hovered, then brushed the cover. It was warm, pulsing faintly like a living thing. The sensation startled him, but not enough to let go. He lifted it into his arms. The weight was strange—denser than paper, more like stone.
He opened the cover.
The pages shimmered, text rearranging itself as he looked. Glyphs crawled like insects, twisting until they locked into place as words he understood. His heart leapt. A spark spell, written in plain lines. He laughed softly under his breath. It was absurd. This was the kind of thing that always happened at the start of those webnovels he used to binge. The protagonist stumbles on a cheat, a relic, a golden finger.
He swallowed. Maybe that was what this was. His cheat.
He copied the symbols, tracing them in the air with a hesitant hand. Heat surged suddenly down his arm. A spark flared at his fingertip—then snapped back violently into his palm. Pain seared him, sharp and raw. He cried out, stumbling into the mud. The book slipped from his grasp, but the rain didn't touch it. It lay on the ground, perfectly dry, pages fluttering as though amused.
He cradled his burned hand, hissing. The welt already bubbled red. The sting refused to fade. This wasn't dream pain. This was real. He pressed his hand to his shirt, breathing hard, eyes fixed on the book.
It pulsed again, steady, insistent. Glyphs reshaped across its open page, promising more. His chest tightened. He should have been afraid, but fascination rooted him. The book was too perfect, too convenient, like it had been placed here for him to find. That thought whispered through his mind and refused to leave.
A voice carried faintly over the rain. Laughter. He snapped his head up. Torches bobbed in the distance, figures moving slowly through the mist. Their voices grew clearer with each shift of the wind. Jay froze. He wasn't alone.
For a moment he considered running, finding another hollow to hide in. But the memory of cold stone and rainwater made his stomach clench. A night alone out here would likely result in hypothermia and an empty stomach. The firelight ahead promised shelter, possibly food, and maybe even welcoming people who could explain what this place was.
He gathered the book, tucking it under his arm. The warmth seeped into his chest through the fabric of his hoodie. He adjusted his grip and stepped down the slope, boots sinking into mud, mist curling low around his legs. The laughter ahead carried again, careless and human.
Not feeling like spending the night under a blanket of rain, Jay decided it was worth the risk.
He followed the figures from behind for what seemed like a few miles, which led to a path that sank between low stone walls, half-collapsed under moss and time. Beyond them, a handful of cottages leaned toward one another like tired companions. Light seeped through shutter slats. Someone had strung a wet cloak under the eaves of the nearest house; the water dripping from its hem counted seconds on the packed earth. The smell of woodsmoke and wet wool tugged at him with a homesick feeling for a home he couldn't name.
Two figures rounded the corner with torches: a woman in a hooded shawl and a broad-shouldered man pushing a handcart stacked with split logs. The woman's laugh faltered when she saw him—soaked, muddy, a stranger at their fence. The man shifted his grip on the cart's handle, not threatening, but ready.
"Evening," Jay said, keeping his hands visible and the book tucked tight under his arm, spine pressed to his ribs. His voice came out hoarse. "I'm—lost. Storm caught me on the moor."
The woman's gaze flicked to his burned palm, then to his shoes. "You're far from the road to be 'caught,' stranger," she said. Her accent clipped the words, softening the edges. "Have you kin here?"
He shook his head. "No kin. Just need a dry corner and I'll be gone at first light." He gestured vaguely to the cart. "I can carry wood. Or shovel mud. Whatever you need."
That turned the man's posture a degree away from wary. He glanced at the woman. She lifted her torch a little higher, taking him in properly. "There's the public room at the Gull," she said. "If the keeper's in a good mood. And there's Old Rill's shed, but the goats will complain."
Jay managed a thin smile. "I've slept in worse."
The man snorted, amused despite himself, and nodded toward the main lane. "Come along then. No sense leaking all the rain into your bones."
They set off together. Jay kept half a pace behind, careful not to make his presence feel like pressure. The torchlight licked at the stone walls, pulling wet colors out of them: green from moss, rust from old nails, a faint glimmer where mica ran in thin veins. The book's warmth bled through his hoodie into his side, a steady pulse that matched his steps. He tried not to think about it.
"Name?" the woman asked over her shoulder.
"Jay." He hesitated. The rest of it felt beyond his recollection, slipping from his mind when he reached for it. He let it go. "Yours?"
"Marle," she said. "This is Brin."
Brin grunted in greeting and pushed the cart a little faster, wheels bumping over ruts. "You didn't come by the south gate," he said. "We keep watch there in bad weather. You walked the moor?"
"I didn't see a gate," Jay said. "Only stones and rain." He kept his tone mild, truthful as far as it went. "Found a bit of shelter under a rock, then saw some walking this direction."
Marle made a small sound that could have been sympathy or skepticism. "Bad place to wander," she said. "People fall into the bogs every year. Not always the bogs that catch them."
Jay filed that away without asking. The night didn't need more mysteries.
They passed a low building with a painted sign of a bird perched on a barrel, then another with a wheel hung over the door. A boy darted between two houses with a string of onions around his neck, bare feet slapping the mud; he paused to stare at Jay and then vanished like a rabbit. The village was older than it looked, the kind of place that grew around a shared fire and never stopped.
"The Gull," Brin said finally, stopping before a wider house with a deep porch and a lantern swaying under its eave. The door stood half-open. Warmth breathed out, carrying the smell of broth and beer. "Keeper's name is Foss. If he tells you no, try Old Rill's shed behind the kiln."
Marle tilted the torch to look at Jay's face again, reading something there he wasn't sure he wore. "If Foss is quarrelsome tonight," she said, "tell him Marle sent you. He owes me two coppers and a favor."
"I'll do that," Jay said. "Thank you."
"Don't thank us yet," Brin said, but his mouth had curved. "Just don't steal our chickens."
They moved on with their cart, the torchlight wobbling away. Jay stood for a breath, soaking in the lantern's warmth, then pushed the door with his shoulder.
The public room was all rough wood and low voices. A hearth burned along the far wall. Men in work-stained shirts hunched over bowls; a woman with sleeves rolled to her elbows wiped a table with brisk strokes. A dog slept in the corner with its nose tucked under its tail. Heads turned when Jay stepped in—only briefly, the way small places noticed everything but rarely commented on it aloud.
A man the size of a wardrobe straightened behind the counter. His beard was gray, and his eyes had the tired kindness of someone who had watched a the years go by6. "What's the weather like?" he asked, as if the answer might be different from the drip off Jay's cuffs.
"Wet," Jay said. "And getting wetter."
That got a few smiles. The big man nodded at the empty stools. "You're carrying half the moor on your boots. Wipe them on the mat before you drown my floor. What do you need?"
"A corner," Jay said. "If you've got one. I can pay—" He patted at pockets that felt lighter than memory told him they should. His stomach knotted. He came up with a handful of unfamiliar coins, slick with rain. "—with this? Or with work."
The man's gaze flicked to the coins, then back to Jay's face. "Not many carry sea-mint this far inland," he said mildly. "You're a traveler, then."
"I walked by mistake," Jay said. It wasn't a lie.
"Foss," the man said, tapping his chest. "Two coppers and a favor will get you a blanket by the hearth and a bowl of stew. If you don't mind men's boots drying around your head."
"Marle said you might say that," Jay said before he could stop himself.
Foss grunted, faintly amused. "Marle always collects her debts in good weather and spends them in bad. Sit. The stew's still honest."
Jay sank onto a bench near the hearth. Heat washed his face, and the shaking he hadn't noticed he carried finally began to settle. He tucked the book under the bench where his foot could rest on it, a crude claim that felt necessary. A bowl thumped down in front of him, steam carrying the scent of onion and something gamy. He ate with the speed of someone whose body had taken over the decision-making. The broth scalded his tongue; the burn was almost welcome.