That night, the streets were deserted; not a single vehicle passed by. Only the early morning wind blew gently between the dreary buildings.
Kevin Michael, a man in his 30s whose office job was consuming his life with overtime, was finally going home. On the empty sidewalk, the watch on his wrist showed two in the morning. "Today... was terrible. All this overtime is going to make me die young," he muttered with a long sigh.
For a moment, a temptation crossed his mind: Should I just resign? But he quickly dismissed it. He knew how hard it was to find a new job. "Tomorrow is Sunday... I can sleep all day, I guess," he said, half-resigned.
As he reached the red light intersection, a truck sped past. Kevin waited on the side, letting the large vehicle pass through the empty street. "Maybe the driver is also working overtime," he whispered, rubbing the back of his neck.
After the truck passed, he began to cross.
Krrttt~~
His stomach rumbled loudly. His hunger was growing. "Do I still have instant noodles back at the boarding house, I wonder..." He reached for his phone. A notification for the electricity bill popped up. "My life... it's so difficult," he complained. Then he opened the internet to watch some videos for entertainment.
He walked on. "Tomorrow is Sunday. I have to go to the temple there," he whispered to himself, thinking of a small temple on the outskirts of the city he rarely visited.
"Maybe a little prayer can change this bad luck."
He continued his steps, thoughts of instant noodles and the temple swirling in his mind.
The next day, a Sunday morning that was perhaps too early, with the sky still dark, Kevin walked towards the temple. He knelt on the cold floor, praying long and hard for guidance, a better job, or just peace of mind.
As the sun began to rise, casting an orange light over the temple roof, Kevin felt slightly relieved, but no miracle had occurred.
He walked down the temple's stone steps, his mind still preoccupied with bills and work. Suddenly, Kevin's eyes caught something.
Tucked between the roots of an old, sprawling banyan tree was a strange object. It was a small box, made of blackened wood, tied with a worn leather strap. The box had no hinges; only intricate carvings, like a spider's web, covered its entire surface.
Curiosity overcame his caution. Kevin squatted and touched the box. The wood was extraordinarily cold, as if it had absorbed all the warmth from its surroundings.
He pulled it out of the roots. As the box lay entirely in his hands, he noticed a sentence carved on it. "Mundus putrescens semper cum fortunatis consentit." (A decaying world always agrees with the fortunate.)
A moment after reading the sentence, Kevin felt a sharp throb in his head. The world around him—the distant sound of vehicles and the smell of temple incense—suddenly faded.
He looked closely at the carvings on the box. In a flash, he saw thousands of images pass: steam engines, men in strange military uniforms, thick fog, and most clearly: a pair of sharp, silver eyes.
THUD!
The box fell from his hands. The moment it hit the ground, a sound like distant breaking glass, yet echoing inside his brain, was heard.
Kevin Michael collapsed, his consciousness vanishing, as if his soul had been pulled from his body by an invisible force.
When he opened his eyes, he woke up in a completely unfamiliar wooden room. "Where am I?"
BOOMMM~
Before he could even figure out what was happening, a massive explosion tore through his room, throwing him into a corner. Dust and smoke filled the room, and within the haze, two mysterious figures appeared. They looked like trained assassins, tall, dressed like men from the Victorian era, complete with black suits and vests.
Kevin was still processing the events, but his instinct told him he had to hide. 'Who are they? Why are they attacking me?' was his first thought.
Thick smoke hung in the air, with pieces of wood scattered on the floor. Kevin's ears were ringing, his head spinning. But the heavy footsteps of the two mysterious figures slowly approached, the rhythm steady... almost like a ritual.
"The target is inside. Don't let him fully regain consciousness," the first man's flat voice was calm, yet cold as a knife.
The second man lifted something... a black iron rod the length of an arm, its tip engraved with a strange symbol. The symbol seemed to move as if the etching was breathing in the darkness.
Kevin swallowed. This wasn't a dream... was it?
With the last of his strength, he crawled behind an old wooden cabinet. His breath was ragged, his heart beating erratically.
SRAKK~
A dark red light illuminated the room, cutting through the smoke. The man lit the symbol on his rod, and then a low chanting sound echoed:
"Vermis… occulta… revelare." (Worm... hidden... reveal.)
A beam of light shot out from the man's rod. "He's there!" the man pointed at the old cabinet where Kevin was hiding.
Kevin's heart pounded, his breath caught in his throat. "What the hell is that?" The two figures stepped forward.
"I'm sure he has it," a deep, cold voice came from the figure on the left, whose suit was as black as night.
The other man raised his palm. From his hand, a centralized dark energy shot out rapidly.
"Damn!"
~Dooommmm!!! The smoke from the explosion covered the room; the cabinet where Kevin was hiding was now scorched to ashes.
But miraculously... he was still alive. Dragged behind a low table, his body was bruised but not fatally injured.
"The explosion shouldn't have been enough to kill him; 'the object' must have been taken by him." The skinnier figure adjusted his vest, which was spotless. "Find him! We must clean up this mess before the numbers get disappointed."
'Damn it, this isn't a dream!' Kevin realized this was not a joke. He still didn't understand anything, but one thing was clear: they wanted to kill him.
He glanced at his hands. His digital watch was gone, and his arms, which were usually chubby, now felt leaner and stronger. He saw a reflection in a broken piece of glass in the corner: his face was slightly different, younger, handsome, with gray eyes and a strange expression he didn't recognize.
Krrkk!
The room's door swung open and fell to the ground. One of the figures, reaching two meters in height, approached his hiding spot.
Run!
A cold and foreign instinct suddenly screamed in Kevin's mind, not as a thought, but as a physical sensation. He felt a hot sensation behind his chest.
As one of the enemies approached, Kevin burst out towards the broken window without much thought. A bullet struck his shoulder, sharp and hot, but he still had to keep moving.
"Stop him!" the thin man shouted.
A loud shot rang out. Kevin felt the bullet graze his shoulder, a burning but not crippling pain.
At the same time, he felt something fall out of the pocket of his new pants: an old copper coin with a strange carving, an eye above a wisp of fog.
As he jumped out the window—which turned out to be on the second floor—he grabbed the coin. In his grip, the cold night mist on the street seemed to thicken slightly, enveloping him.
Thump!
His body landed hard on the cobblestone street. Pain shot through him, but he endured. The pain in his shoulder was distracted by the strange sensation from the coin in his hand. Across the street, he saw a rusty sign that read: 'Zoutelan Street, East Wall' and below it, a logo of a gear and steam.
"Damn it! What is 'Zoutelan Street, East Wall'? This isn't Earth!" he whispered in a panic.
This world smelled of coal, blood, and iron. He was now completely alone, being hunted, and somehow, transformed into someone unfamiliar.
Kevin didn't have time to think about the pain. His adrenaline pumped, overriding the gunshot wound in his shoulder. He quickly got up, trembling, and ran as fast as he could toward a dark alley between two buildings.
Gas lamps flickered dimly, illuminating the increasingly thick night fog. The foul smell of open sewers mixed with the characteristic aroma of coal soot. Along Zoutelan Street, there were only the dreary silhouettes of tightly closed windows, as if the entire city was holding its breath.
He reached into his pocket—pants that felt like coarse wool, not his office chinos. Inside, there was only that strange copper coin. The carving of the eye and the fog felt cold in his palm.
Kevin paused for a moment, looking up. The men in Victorian clothes would surely follow soon. They moved with abnormal speed and, more worryingly, they used magic! Orbs of darkness! Latin spells!
'Vermis… occulta… revelare.' The words spun in his head. Hidden worm, reveal.
"They seem to belong to a specific organization, and they are looking for this. It seems the owner of this body stole it from them." Kevin gripped the coin tightly.
Suddenly, he realized something. "My whole body feels lighter, more agile now. I jumped from the second floor without a broken bone, just bruises and scrapes. This shouldn't be possible. A corporate slave like me should have collapsed with a crushed ankle. Who is this person, really?"
A cold instinct flashed through his mind... Keep moving.
He followed his instinct, turning into a narrow alley filled with wooden trash cans and piles of wet newspaper.
From the main street, he heard the creak of leather shoes. This time, there weren't just two. There were more footsteps.
"Search the East area! The object hasn't been fully absorbed yet, we can still retrieve it!" a hoarse voice shouted.
Kevin hid behind a pile of boxes. He saw four men. All of them wore black suits and bowler hats. One of them held a steam-powered flashlight that emitted a yellowish light.
'The object'? Kevin felt like the protagonist of a bad sci-fi story who had just read a warning label on his own body.
The last man walking, the tallest, sniffed the air. "I smell the residual aura of the Ninth. A disgusting smell of Stupidity and Madness."
'Ninth,' so that's this man's identity. Sounds like a codename. It's possible I was one of their members, and if that's true, it makes sense why they're chasing me.
Ninth felt a tickling sensation in his stomach. Not out of fear, but from the thought that he had transmigrated to another world and immediately become a fugitive of a mysterious organization.
A moment after thinking, his instinct screamed again. This time, the instinct demanded him to Reverse the Situation.
In front of him, there was an old glass bottle lying around. Ninth grabbed it, thinking the object would surely be useful. With a quick, strangely accurate motion, he threw the bottle against the far wall behind the pursuers.
CRASH!
The sound of shattering glass was sharp in the silence of the night.
The four men simultaneously turned their heads. "What was that sound? Behind us!"
While they were turning, Ninth took the opportunity. He leaped out of his hiding spot, not to run, but to sneak across the street.
He moved swiftly, his posture slightly bent, similar to an acrobat. The movement felt right, natural, as if he had trained all his life to move unseen.
As he reached the street corner, Ninth heard the frustrated voices of his pursuers. One of them lit the same magic rod, this time with a pale green light.
"He's not here. He must be heading towards the Dock District. Hurry up! If he uses that ability, we're in big trouble!"
Ninth slowed his pace. Analyzing the magic. "He couldn't detect me like before. So that magic has a range, if estimated, 10 meters from the caster."
He was thinking fast now, the Dock District. He needed a map, he needed answers, and most importantly, he needed to understand what he, or 'the object,' was capable of doing.
He squeezed the coin in his hand. The smell of old copper rust and the scent of the night fog. The coin was not just a coin. It was a key. A key to understanding why he didn't die, and why he was now the 'Ninth' hunted by a mysterious organization in this world full of mysteries.
He looked down at the wound on his shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, and the pain was beginning to subside, too quickly for a gunshot wound.
Kevin made a decision. He couldn't go back to the ruined room. He had to go to the Docks. But first, he needed inconspicuous clothes, information, and, yes, food. His stomach was still rumbling.