The scream died in his throat.
Amir's eyes snapped open to absolute darkness, his body convulsing upright in bed with a violence that sent the thin wool blanket tangling around his legs. His heart was a jackhammer against his ribs, each beat a thunderous percussion that seemed to shake the entire apartment. His lungs heaved, drawing in air that tasted of stale sweat and the omnipresent coal smoke that seeped through every crack in Steelhaven's buildings.
For a moment—just a moment—he couldn't remember where he was.
The darkness was absolute. Not the comfortable darkness of a bedroom with curtains drawn, but the oppressive, suffocating black of a place where light had been deliberately excluded. His hands, trembling, reached out and found the rough brick wall beside his bed. Cold. Damp. Real. His apartment The one he'd rented for 450 gold coins in the Ironheart District—a "moderately clean" stretch of Steelhaven wedged between the factory sprawl and the old temple quarter, where the air smelled equally of machine oil and incense.
He forced himself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The technique he'd learned in some half-remembered yoga class back on Earth—back when his biggest worry was whether his spreadsheets would pass the quarterly audit.
What the fuck was that?
The dream clung to him like wet fabric, refusing to be shaken off. He could still smell it—the acrid reek of burning metal, the sweet rot of cooked flesh, the ozone tang of an explosion that had leveled an entire forest. He could still see it: the plane crumpling like paper, the wyvern's massive form silhouetted against the blast, the pilot's face—young, sharp-jawed, terrified—as he dug the burning crystals from his own leg.
The brothers. Gods, the brothers. Being eaten alive by those clicking things while the pilot screamed his name.
Amir's hand moved to his thigh, pressing against the fabric of his sleep trousers as if to confirm the skin beneath was still whole, still his, not a cauterized ruin with a glowing stone lodged against bone.
It was just a dream. Just another nightmare in a world that seemed determined to provide an endless supply of them.
But it had felt so real.
Not like his other nightmares—the ones where Gail died over and over, where Reil's head rolled across the forest floor, where the headless woman cradled her doll of living shadow. Those were his trauma, his guilt, his failures replaying on an endless loop.
This was different.
This was someone else's death. Someone else's pain. Someone else's final, desperate prayer to a god that didn't answer.
Why did I dream that?
He reached over to the small table beside his bed—a rickety thing made of warped wood and held together by what he suspected was pure spite—and fumbled in the darkness for the oil lamp. His fingers found the cool glass of the reservoir, traced up to the brass knob. He twisted it, heard the soft hiss of gas releasing, then struck a match from the tin box he kept beside it.
The flame caught with a soft whoomp, and warm, orange light bloomed across the cramped space of his bedroom.
The light was a mercy and a curse. It chased away the suffocating darkness, but it also revealed the truth of his surroundings: a room barely twelve feet square, walls of exposed brick stained with decades of soot and grime, a single small window with iron bars across it—not for security, but to keep the building's sagging structure from collapsing inward. The glass was so grimy that even in daylight, it barely let in more than a murky grey haze.
His bed—a narrow, lumpy thing with a mattress that had seen better decades—sat against the far wall. The sheets were tangled around him like the coils of some mechanical serpent, damp with sweat. Above the bed, he'd tacked up a map of Steelhaven, its surface marked with colored pins that Johnathan had given him during one of their debriefings: red for active investigations, blue for closed cases, black for "areas of extreme paranormal activity."
The black pins were concentrated around the Wicked Forest and the industrial slums.
Across from the bed sat the small wooden table that held his lamp. On its surface: a stack of case files from the Inquisition, their edges curled and stained with coffee rings. A tin cup half-filled with water that had gone stale overnight. His pocket watch—standard Inquisition issue, its brass casing etched with the gear-and-eye emblem—reading 4:47 AM. And a leather journal, its pages filled with his own handwriting—notes, observations, sketches of runes he'd seen in the field, questions about the Gear system that he still didn't fully understand.
Why did that dream feel like a memory?
He stared at the journal, at the most recent entry he'd made before collapsing into bed last night:
"Met the Cog Master. Passed his tests (barely). One thousand gold richer. Combined mission: Tannery + VIC Plumber Company. Captain says they're connected. How? Need to find out. Debriefing tomorrow."
Tomorrow. Which was now today.
To the left of the table stood a wooden cabinet, its paint peeling in long strips to reveal the raw wood beneath. The doors hung slightly crooked on their hinges—a casualty of the building settling unevenly over the years. Inside: his spare clothes, neatly folded (a habit from his old life that refused to die). Three pairs of dark trousers. Five practical shirts. A spare pair of boots, their leather cracked and worn.
And on the top shelf, carefully arranged in a wooden rack he'd built himself: the potions Johnathan had given him. Eight glass vials, each one stoppered with cork and wax, each one labeled in Amir's careful handwriting because Johnathan's only instruction had been: "Figure out which is which by the smell, dumbass. Or don't, and drink the wrong one. Natural selection."
Amir had spent an entire evening sniffing each vial, cross-referencing with the Inquisition's alchemical manual, and labeling them:
Strength (smelled like burnt iron)Stamina (faint scent of mint and copper)Dexterity (sharp, almost citrus-like)Endurance (earthy, like wet stone)Night Vision (chemical, acrid)Speed (sweet, sickly, like overripe fruit)Health/Healing (clean, antiseptic)Quick Regeneration (metallic, with an undertone of something organic and wrong)
He'd color-coded them with strips of cloth tied around the necks, but he still double-checked the labels every time. Johnathan's warning had been clear: "Mix up the yellow and the red, and you'll shit yourself to death while running at superhuman speed. It's not a dignified way to go."
On the opposite wall, a bookshelf—constructed from salvaged wood and metal brackets, looking like it might collapse at any moment but somehow stubbornly refusing to do so. The books were a chaotic mix:
Top Shelf: Inquisition manuals. "Tuner Classification and Frequency Ratings." "Field Guide to Common Paranormal Entities." "Protocols for Containment and Elimination." All dry, technical, and absolutely essential. He'd read each one cover to cover, taking notes in the margins despite the librarian's protests.
Middle Shelf: A leather-bound journal titled "The Seven Gears: A Theological Examination" (which he'd borrowed from the Inquisition library three weeks ago and kept meaning to return). A folded map of the Iron Republic, its edges torn and stained. A slim volume called "The Outsider Phenomenon: Historical Accounts" that he'd found in a dusty corner of the archives. He'd been reading it obsessively, searching for any mention of someone like him—someone not from this world. So far, he'd found references to three confirmed Outsiders across two centuries. One had become a king. One had founded a religion. One had been burned as a heretic.
Bottom Shelf: Personal items. A small, wooden box containing the few coins he had left after rent and supplies. A spare knife in a leather sheath. A whetstone.
Amir swung his legs out of bed, his bare feet hitting the cold wooden floorboards with a dull thud. The floor creaked under his weight—everything in this building creaked, groaned, or hissed. It was like living inside the ribcage of some dying mechanical beast.
He stood, stretching, feeling the pull of muscles that were still sore from the previous night's exertion. His ribs ached—a dull, persistent reminder of the beating he'd taken during the coup. The Tuner healing had closed the worst of it, but the deep bruising remained, a map of violence written across his torso in shades of yellow and brown.
The dream.
It wouldn't leave him alone. The pilot's face. The way the crystals had burned through his leg, melting flesh and muscle. The wyvern's eyes—burning green, intelligent, hungry. The brother's final scream, cut short by teeth and tearing.
Why did I see that? Was it real? Is it happening right now, somewhere out there in the Wicked Forest?
He didn't know. And that terrified him more than any monster he'd faced.
He'd had prophetic dreams before—the seven figures in the mist, the flames, the screams—and then he'd woken to find Oakhaven burning. But that had been vague, symbolic. This was specific. Detailed. Like he'd been there, living it through someone else's eyes.
Am I losing my mind? Or is this world doing something to me?
He grabbed a towel from a hook on the wall—threadbare, stained, but clean—and made his way to the bathroom.
The bathroom was barely large enough to turn around in. A narrow space carved out of what had probably once been a storage closet, its walls the same exposed brick as the rest of the apartment. A small, cracked mirror hung above a chipped porcelain sink. A tin bucket sat in the corner, filled with water he'd hauled up from the communal pump in the building's courtyard the night before. No running water in the apartments—that was a luxury reserved for the wealthy districts.
He set the oil lamp from his bedroom on the narrow shelf beside the sink, its light casting harsh shadows across his face in the mirror.
He looked like shit.
Dark circles under his eyes, deep enough to be bruises. A faint, faded yellow stain along his jawline—the last remnant of Princess Seraphina's vase, nearly healed now but still tender to the touch. A thin cut above his left eyebrow that he didn't even remember getting, probably from flying debris during the coup. But Tuner healing had already sealed it—barely a scar now. His hair was a mess, sticking up at odd angles, and his stubble had crossed the line from "rugged" to "vagrant."
Welcome to Steelhaven, where everyone looks like they're one bad day away from collapsing.
He splashed cold water on his face from the bucket, the shock of it driving away the last clinging tendrils of the dream. The water was frigid, almost painful, but it helped. It grounded him. Reminded him that he was here, now, alive, and not burning to death in a forest with crystals melting through his bones.
Then he reached for the small wooden box on the shelf above the sink.
Inside: a bundle of thin, fibrous sticks, each about the length of his hand, their ends frayed into bristle-like fibers. They were pale brown, slightly rough to the touch, and smelled faintly of wood and something astringent.
Cleaner's Reeds.
He pulled one out, examining it in the lamplight. It looked exactly like the miswak sticks his uncle used to use back on Earth—same texture, same faint woody smell, same method of use. You chewed the end until it frayed, then used the fibers to scrub your teeth and gums.
I can't believe these things exist in this world.
He stuck the reed—miswak, it's a fucking miswak, call it what it is—in his mouth, biting down on the end to soften the fibers, then began scrubbing. The taste was bitter, slightly astringent, but not unpleasant. It left his mouth feeling clean in a way that the harsh, chemical toothpastes of Earth never had.
As he brushed, his mind wandered, unable to escape the loop of questions.
How much of this world matches Earth?
It was a question that had been gnawing at him since he'd arrived. The similarities were too numerous to be coincidence:
The Cleaner's Reeds (miswak).The steam-wagons (basically cars, just powered differently).The firearms (he'd seen rifles that looked like MP35s, revolvers that could've come from a Western).The social structure (industrial revolution, class divide, oppressive government, factory workers ground into dust).Even the language—he'd discovered in the archives that the common tongue of Echogard had evolved from ancient Ouijae, which had been influenced centuries ago by an "Outsider" named George the Great Knowledger, who had introduced linguistic concepts that sounded suspiciously like English.
Am I the first person from Earth to end up here? Or just the latest in a long line of people who got pulled through whatever cosmic blender spat me out into a field with a cow?
He spat into the sink, rinsed his mouth with a handful of cold water, and stared at his reflection.
And why the hell am I dreaming about planes crashing and wyverns and people dying in ways I've never seen?
The dream refused to fade. If anything, the more awake he became, the sharper the details grew. He could remember the texture of the pilot's flight suit, the way the leather had been stained with oil and blood. He could remember the sound the crystals made as they burned—a high, keening whine, like metal under stress. He could remember the exact pattern of the wyvern's scales, black and gleaming like obsidian.
It felt like a memory. But it's not mine.
He took a deep breath, gripping the edge of the sink, forcing himself to let it go. He had work to do. A mission. The Cog Master was waiting, and the tannery wasn't going to investigate itself.
One problem at a time, Amir. You can have a breakdown later.
Amir left the bathroom, the oil lamp in hand, and moved through his apartment with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd memorized every creak in the floorboards, every loose nail, every place where the floor dipped because the support beams beneath had rotted through decades ago.
The main room was a combination living space and kitchen, though calling it a "kitchen" was generous. It was more of a "corner where food-related activities occasionally happened."
A small, cast-iron stove sat in the corner, its chimney pipe snaking up through the ceiling to vent into the building's central flue. The stove was old, dented, and temperamental—it took a specific combination of kindling, coal, and what Amir could only describe as "aggressive negotiation" to get it to light. But once it was going, it put out enough heat to make the apartment almost comfortable on cold nights.
Beside the stove, a wooden counter—warped, stained, scarred with knife marks from previous tenants. Above it, a single shelf held his meager supplies:
A tin of coffee (expensive, but necessary for survival).A cloth sack of hard bread (the kind that lasted for weeks because it was already petrified).A jar of pickled vegetables (bought from a street vendor, tasted like vinegar and regret).A small pot and a single tin plate.A box of matches.A half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey (for emergencies, or nights when the nightmares were too much).
He set the lamp on the counter and opened the cloth sack, pulling out a piece of bread. It was rock-hard, the kind of thing you had to dunk in water or coffee to make it remotely edible, or risk breaking a tooth. He bit into it anyway, his jaw working to break off a chunk.
Tastes like cardboard. But it's food.
As he chewed, he moved to the cabinet and began pulling on his clothes, the routine so familiar now it was almost meditative.
First, the trousers—dark, practical, with reinforced knees. Then a shirt, plain and grey. Over that, the leather waistcoat Johnathan had given him, He strapped the belt around his waist feeling the reassuring weight of the glass vials pressing against his lower ribs and hips.
Then came the long coat—charcoal grey, heavy, with a high collar that could be turned up against the wind. It had deep pockets, and he filled them: the journal, a few spare coins, a folding knife, a box of matches.
Finally, the flat cap—dark wool, worn but serviceable. He pulled it low over his eyes, the brim casting his face in shadow.
He caught his reflection in the small, cracked mirror by the door.
I look like every other working stiff in this city.
Which was exactly the point.
He holstered the Iron Argument under his coat—the heavy hand cannon a comforting weight against his ribs—and slung the ammunition pouch over his shoulder.
One last look around the apartment.
The bed, unmade. The table, cluttered with case files. The bookshelf, sagging under the weight of stolen knowledge. The cabinet, holding everything he owned in this world.
Home. It wasn't much. But it was his.
He grabbed the last piece of hard bread, shoved it in his coat pocket, and stepped out into the hallway.
The building's stairwell was a narrow, twisting thing, its walls slick with condensation. Gas lamps flickered at each landing, their light dim and sputtering. He descended quickly, his boots echoing on the metal steps.
The ground floor opened into a small courtyard—a shared space for the building's residents, dominated by the communal water pump and a few benches that had long since rotted into uselessness. A woman was already there, filling a bucket, her face lined with exhaustion. She didn't look up as he passed.
He pushed through the heavy iron gate and stepped out onto the street.
The Ironheart District was waking up.
The street was narrow, paved with those same metal plates that echoed under every footstep. On either side, buildings rose three or four stories high—brick and timber and iron, their facades stained black with soot. Smoke curled from a hundred chimneys, merging with the ever-present smog that hung over Steelhaven like a shroud.
To his left, the street sloped upward toward the temple quarter. He could see the spires of the Church of the Great Artificer rising above the rooftops.