Damian had imagined plenty of ways to die.
Guillotine malfunction during the Head Chopper. Drowning in the snake tank when the escape lock jammed. Electrocution during the Lightning Chair routine. Being a magician meant living with creative death scenarios—it came with the job.
Getting shot by an old woman claiming to be God hadn't made the list.
Damn that hag and her Desert Eagle.
But as death settled in—as the void wrapped around his consciousness—Damian felt something unexpected.
Peace.
The darkness was absolute. And somehow, it reminded him of his mother's embrace, back when the world still made sense and the theater was alive with audiences.
The theater his parents built. The one he'd watched die slowly, bleeding customers day by day. After the car crash that killed them both, they'd closed for a month. When they reopened, the seats stayed empty. Damian had burned through his savings, performed for ghosts, tried everything he could think of.
The theater died anyway.
His talent hadn't mattered. His effort hadn't mattered.
Maybe if he'd given up earlier, he wouldn't have died holding onto a corpse of a dream.
Maybe the old woman did me a favor.
The thought tasted bitter. Also true.
The peace lasted exactly as long as peace ever did in Damian's life.
The void started shaking.
At first, he thought he was imagining it. Then the tremors grew stronger, violent, like reality itself was having a seizure. His consciousness—weightless just moments ago—suddenly felt heavy, being pulled somewhere.
Wait—what's happening?
The darkness convulsed. Pain exploded in his skull, sharp and nauseating. Not the quick nothing of a bullet, but a slow, throbbing agony that built and built until he wanted to scream.
He tried to move. Couldn't. Tried to open his eyes. Couldn't do that either.
Light stabbed through the darkness in thin strips. Blurry. Distant.
Then sound—muffled at first, like hearing voices underwater.
"—asleep again—"
"—three days—"
"—what kind of—"
The words sharpened gradually, coming into focus the way vision did when you rubbed your eyes too hard.
"Hey! Now you finally woke up!"
A woman's voice. Angry. Frustrated. Close.
Too close.
"Sleeping at your desk while you have a client standing right here—what kind of detective are you?!"
Detective?
That word cut through the fog. Damian forced his eyes open. Everything was blurry, shapes and colors bleeding together. He blinked. Once. Twice.
The world assembled itself piece by piece.
He was slumped over a desk. Wooden. Dark. There was moisture on the surface—had he been drooling?
Where—
"Huh?" The sound escaped him before he could think, rough and confused.
He looked up, following the voice.
A woman stood over him. Blonde hair pulled back, sharp features, blue eyes that could cut glass. She looked maybe mid-twenties, and she was staring at him like he'd personally disappointed her ancestors.
His brain tried to process what he was seeing, but everything felt wrong. Too slow. Like his thoughts were wading through thick mud.
She wore a long black coat. That was the first thing he noticed—not because it was unusual, but because it looked expensive. The kind of expensive that meant someone had actually tailored it to fit perfectly. It reached nearly to her ankles, fitted through the shoulders and waist before flaring at the hips. Beneath it, a burgundy waistcoat peeked out, brass buttons catching what little light filtered into the room.
Tall boots. Leather gloves. A bowler hat perched at a precise angle on her head.
She looked like she'd walked straight out of a Victorian painting. Or a very elaborate costume drama.
What the hell is going on?
Damian stared at her, then at the room around her, then back at her. His mind couldn't quite connect the pieces. Nothing made sense. He'd died—he knew he'd died—and now he was here, wherever "here" was, and this woman was yelling at him about—
About what?
"Who are you?" The words came out hoarse. His throat felt dry, scratchy. "Where am I?"
The woman's expression shifted from anger to something worse. Disbelief. Concern. The look you gave someone when you realized they might have actually lost their mind.
Her eyes narrowed. "Damian Void," she said slowly, like she was speaking to a child. "Don't act like you don't know me."
Damian Void?
That wasn't his name. His name was Damian—just Damian. Surname was... was...
He tried to remember. Came up blank.
Why can't I remember my surname?
"And don't act like a fool," the woman continued, her voice rising. "It's been three days since I hired you! Three days! Where's the result? And I come here finding you drooling on your table?"
She crossed her arms, the motion sharp and angry.
Damian's eyes dropped for half a second—instinct, really, the kind of stupid male instinct that had gotten him in trouble more than once—and he registered that despite all the layers of Victorian clothing, her posture made certain features rather... prominent.
Then his brain caught up with what his eyes were doing.
Her expression went nuclear.
"And what the FUCK are you looking at?!"
"Nothing!" Damian's head snapped up so fast his neck cracked. Heat flooded his face. "I wasn't—I didn't—"
Smooth. Real smooth.
"It's just that..." He trailed off, because what could he possibly say? Sorry, I died and woke up here and I'm very confused and also you have nice—
No. Absolutely not.
He coughed, trying to reset. "It's just that I don't understand what's happening right now."
That, at least, was true.
The woman's glare didn't soften. If anything, it got sharper. But she didn't say anything, just kept staring at him like she was trying to decide if he was lying or genuinely brain-damaged.
Damian took the silence as an opportunity to actually look around.
The room was an office. Small, dark, filled with wooden furniture that had clearly seen better days. Behind the woman, near the door, there was a long bench. To his left, a large board covered in chalk writing—notes, diagrams, information his brain tried to parse but couldn't quite grasp. Behind him, he could sense without looking a wooden rack with supplies.
And to his right, a window covered by brown curtains. Thin strips of sunlight squeezed through the gaps, giving the room a heavy, shadowed quality.
Everything was rendered in browns, greys, blacks. Muted. Drained of color.
Like the whole world had been dunked in sepia tone.
The woman wore Victorian clothing. Real Victorian clothing, not costume-shop knockoffs. The furniture looked period-authentic. The whole room felt like it belonged in the 1800s.
No.
The thought arrived slowly, unwelcome.
No, this can't be—
"Hello?!" The woman snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Are you even listening to me?"
Damian blinked, jerked back to the present. "I... sorry, I..."
He couldn't finish. His mind was spiraling.
The old woman. The gun. The trigger pull. The darkness.
"Let's see your performance in another world."
That's what she'd said. Right before shooting him.
Another world.
Oh god.
His breathing quickened. The memories crashed back all at once—the theater, the failed shows, the gun pressed to his forehead, the old woman's smile as she pulled the trigger.
I died. I actually died.
And now he was here. In a body that felt like his but wasn't quite. In a world that looked wrong in every way. With a name that wasn't his name. In an office he'd never seen before.
With a woman staring at him like he'd ruined her life.
This is real. This is actually real.
"No," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "No, this can't be real. This is a dream. Has to be a dream."
"What are you talking about?" The woman's voice had an edge now. Not just anger—something else. Worry? Fear?
Damian stood up abruptly. The chair scraped against the floor, loud in the quiet room. He pressed his hands to his face, trying to ground himself.
Wake up. Wake up. This is just a nightmare. You're going to wake up in the theater, alone, like always, and everything will be normal.
"Damian—"
Wake UP.
He squeezed his eyes shut, focused on his breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
Nothing changed.
The office was still there when he opened his eyes. The woman was still there, watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"This isn't real," he said aloud. Testing it. "None of this is real."
For a long moment, the woman just stared at him.
Then she moved.
It happened fast—faster than he expected. Her right hand came up and cracked across his face with enough force to snap his head to the side.
The pain was immediate and absolute. His cheek exploded in stinging heat, and for a second he couldn't think, couldn't process anything except ow holy shit that hurt.
He stood there, frozen, one hand slowly rising to touch his face.
That had felt very, very real.
When he looked back at the woman, she was shaking out her hand, wincing slightly like she'd hurt herself hitting him. But her expression—
Her expression broke something in him.
Because she wasn't angry anymore.
She was crying.
Tears streamed down her face, and her whole body was shaking—not with rage, but with something far worse. Desperation. Grief.
"You promised," she said, and her voice cracked on the word. "You promised you'd find my little brother."
Oh.
The name appeared in his mind unbidden: Myra.
He knew her. Or rather, some part of him—some part of whatever this body was—knew her.
"It's been four days, Damian," Myra continued, voice breaking. "Four days since he disappeared. And you're here doing nothing. Sleeping. Acting like—like—"
She couldn't finish. The tears came harder.
"If I'd known," she whispered. "God, if I'd known it would be like this, I would've searched myself. I wouldn't have trusted—"
She cut herself off, wiping at her face with angry, jerking movements.
Damian stood there, still touching his burning cheek, and felt something cold settle in his chest.
A missing child. Four days. And whoever's body he was wearing had done nothing.
Had been sleeping at his desk while a kid was out there, lost or worse.
"Myra," he said quietly. The name felt foreign on his tongue, but right somehow. "I—"
What could he say? He didn't know anything. Didn't know where he was, who he was supposed to be, what had happened. Didn't know how to find her brother, didn't even know what the case was.
He was a failed magician who'd been dropped into a detective's body in another world, and he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
But looking at her face—at the tears, the desperate hope dying in real-time—he couldn't say that.
Couldn't tell her the truth.
Because the truth would destroy whatever tiny chance she had left.
"I'm sorry," he said instead. Meaning it. "I—"
"Enough."
Myra turned away sharply, wiping her face one last time. When she looked back, her expression had hardened into something cold and distant.
"I don't need you," she said flatly. "I'll find him myself."
She walked toward the door.
"Wait—" Damian started forward, hand reaching out.
But she was already through the doorway.
The door slammed shut behind her with a bang that echoed through the small office like a gunshot, and Damian flinched.
Then there was silence.
Complete, suffocating silence.
He stood there for a long moment, hand still half-raised, staring at the closed door.
Slowly, very slowly, he lowered his arm.
His cheek still stung where she'd slapped him. The pain was grounding, in a way. Real. Undeniable.
This is real, he thought. All of this is real.
He'd died. Been shot by a crazy old woman who claimed to be God. And now he was here, in another world, in another body, in another life.
A life that belonged to a detective named Damian Void.
A detective who'd failed someone when they needed him most.
Damian sank back into the chair slowly, his legs suddenly feeling weak. He put his head in his hands, pressing his palms against his eyes.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?