Damian needed to see it.
Needed confirmation that this wasn't just his dying brain's last elaborate hallucination—some final desperate fantasy before the bullet finished its work and everything went dark for real.
He crossed to the window and pulled the brown curtain aside.
Sunlight hit him in the face. Warm. Real. Immediate.
He squinted against it, then looked down at the street below.
Oh.
For a long moment, he just stood there, staring.
Victorian streets stretched out before him like someone had ripped a page from a history book and made it real. Cobblestones worn smooth by decades of traffic. Buildings of dark stone and brick, iron railings decorating their facades. Tall windows catching the morning light. Smoke rising from chimneys, mixing with fog that still clung to the rooftops.
And people. So many people.
They moved along the sidewalks in steady streams—men in long coats and top hats, women in fitted jackets with long skirts. Everyone dressed like they were on their way to the world's most committed costume party.
Except it wasn't a costume party.
A horse-drawn carriage clattered past below, hooves striking cobblestones in a rhythm that echoed up to his window. The driver tipped his hat to a passing woman. She nodded back, didn't even glance twice at the carriage.
Because this was normal for her.
This was just... Tuesday.
"Holy shit," Damian muttered. "I'm really not dreaming."
His hands found the windowsill, gripping it hard enough that his knuckles went white.
The old woman hadn't been joking. She'd said "another world," pulled the trigger, and apparently meant it literally.
Another world.
He'd actually died and woken up somewhere else. Someone else.
The thought should have been terrifying. Maybe it was—he couldn't quite tell yet. Everything felt distant, muted, like his brain had decided to just... pause the panic until it had time to process properly.
Slowly, he looked down at himself.
He'd been too confused earlier to pay attention to what he was wearing. Too focused on the angry blonde woman and the missing brother and the fact that he was apparently supposed to be a detective.
Now, standing in the light from the window, he could actually see it.
White shirt, high-collared and rumpled. The fabric was cotton—rough, real cotton, not the synthetic blend he was used to. A black cravat hung loose around his neck, half-undone like someone had tied it properly once and then given up on maintaining it.
Over the shirt, a grey waistcoat. Fitted snugly across his chest, only two of the three buttons actually fastened. A silver chain hung from the pocket—pocket watch, his brain supplied automatically. He touched it without thinking, felt the weight and warmth of metal that had been pressed against his body for who knows how long.
Dark grey trousers held up by suspenders he could feel against his shoulders. The material was wool, thick and practical.
Black boots on his feet, scuffed and worn in, reaching just above his ankles.
He looked like a detective who'd fallen asleep at his desk and hadn't bothered fixing himself up after.
Which was exactly what had happened, apparently.
After a few more moments watching the impossible street continue its day, Damian let the curtain fall closed.
The office felt darker now. Quieter.
He made his way back to the desk and sank into the chair, letting out a long breath that did absolutely nothing to settle the chaos in his head.
Okay. Think. What am I supposed to do here?
The old woman had shot him and sent him to another world. But why? What was the point? Was he supposed to just... take over this Damian Void's life? Become a detective? Forget everything—his past, his parents, his magic, the theater that died while he watched?
Just pretend none of it happened?
It felt like being dropped in the middle of an intersection with trucks barreling through from every direction, traffic lights be damned. Should he stand still? Pick a road? Try to dodge them all and hope for the best?
"I don't know where to start," he muttered, slumping further into the chair.
Everything had happened so fast. The gun. The darkness. The void. Waking up here. Myra. And now—
Now the weight of it all finally settled on his shoulders, heavy and suffocating.
His gaze drifted lazily across the office, cataloging details he'd been too panicked to register before. The desk was cluttered with papers. The cabinet held books whose titles he could somehow read despite never seeing them before. And on the left wall—
The board.
Large, dark, covered in chalk writing. Notes. Diagrams. Information his brain automatically started connecting into patterns he didn't understand but somehow recognized.
He stared at it.
And then, like someone had pried open his skull with a crowbar, the memories came.
Not his memories.
Damian Void's memories.
They crashed into him like a wave—fragmented images and sensations piecing themselves together faster than he could process. The moment this body woke up for the first time. The cases solved, the people met, the days lived. Myra walking into the office three days ago, tears already forming, begging him to find her little brother. The investigation. The leads. The—
"Argh!"
Damian grabbed his head as pain exploded through his skull, white-hot and splitting. Like his brain was being torn apart and stitched back together simultaneously.
What the fuck—
The pain built and built, worse than the bullet had been, worse than anything he'd ever felt. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything except hold on and wait for it to pass.
It felt like hours.
Probably lasted minutes.
Slowly—agonizingly slowly—the pain began to fade, leaving behind a dull throb and the copper taste of blood in his mouth.
Damian lowered his hands from his head. Something warm dripped from his nose. He touched it absently, fingers coming away red.
"Memories," he muttered, staring at the blood on his fingertips.
He should probably be more concerned about the nosebleed. Should probably be panicking about the fact that someone else's entire life had just downloaded itself into his brain.
But he couldn't focus on that.
Because now he knew.
Now he understood exactly what Damian Void had been doing for the past three days. And it wasn't sleeping.
The real Damian Void had finished the investigation on the second day. Had found the leads, followed the trail, uncovered the truth.
He just hadn't told Myra.
Not yet. Not until he was certain she wouldn't do something stupid and get herself killed trying to rescue her brother on her own.
Because the boy—ten years old, missing for four days—hadn't run away or gotten lost.
He'd been kidnapped.
By the city's only mafia organization.
The kind of organization that had enough power and influence that even the city authorities pretended not to see them. The kind that operated in plain sight because everyone knew that crossing them meant disappearing yourself.
Damian Void had called them "a fat pig with an even fatter owner."
He'd planned to tell Myra everything tonight. On the night of the shipment, when the mafia moved their cargo—including her brother—out of the city for good.
The boy's fate was already sealed. There was nothing to be done. Nothing a lone detective could do, nothing Myra could do, nothing even the city itself would do.
Some fights, you couldn't win.
The memory of that resignation—that cold, logical acceptance—sat in Damian's chest like a stone.
"Damian Void," he said aloud, and his voice came out rough. "You coward."
The anger surprised him. It wasn't his life. Wasn't his case. Wasn't his failure.
But it felt like it.
He didn't have a mirror in the office—at least, he couldn't see one—but if he did, he'd probably want to punch his own face right now. Assuming he was ugly, anyway. If he turned out to be handsome, maybe he'd just think about punching his face. Even anger had its limits.
"Shit." He clenched his fists on the desk, jaw tight. "I'm just a magician. What the hell am I supposed to do in this situation?"
The answer came immediately, cold and logical: Nothing.
If even the city didn't want to offend this mafia organization, what could one detective do? Damian Void had been hired to investigate, not play hero. He'd done his job. Found the truth. That was supposed to be enough.
Except it wasn't.
Because a ten-year-old kid was going to be shipped off somewhere tonight, and everyone—everyone—was just going to let it happen.
Damian stood up so fast his chair scraped loudly against the floor.
"Oh, fuck it."
He crossed to the door, grabbed the handle, then paused.
What are you doing?
He didn't know this world. Didn't know how to fight a mafia organization. Didn't even know how to be a detective, let alone take on criminals that the entire city was too afraid to touch.
All he knew was card tricks and misdirection.
That wasn't going to be enough.
But standing here, letting a kid get trafficked because it was the "smart" thing to do?
That wasn't him either.
I'm not Damian Void, he thought. I'm not the guy who gives up and accepts defeat.
Even if maybe he should be. Even if that's exactly what he'd done with the theater—watched it die and done nothing.
This was different.
Had to be different.
He pulled the door open.
First, he needed to find Myra. Tell her the truth—all of it. The kidnapping, the mafia, the shipment tonight.
Then... well, he'd figure that part out when he got there.
Probably something stupid and dangerous that would get him killed.