The cold was the first thing that truly brought me to my senses. It wasn't just a chilly breeze; it was a deep, biting freeze that felt like needles piercing my thin clothes.
I was still sitting in the dirty alleyway, my back pressed against the freezing brick wall. I forced myself to stop staring at the giant Black Hole in the sky. If I kept looking at it, I was going to lose my mind. I needed to focus on the immediate problem: survival.
Okay, Austin. Think, I told myself. You are a university student. Treat this like a lab experiment. Observe the environment.
I looked down at my hands. They were small, pale, and covered in grime. My fingernails were chipped. I was wearing a ragged grey wool coat that was three sizes too big, held together by a piece of rope tied around my waist. My boots had holes in them.
According to the fuzzy memories floating in my brain, this body belonged to a boy named Arthur. He was an orphan living in the Umbra—the dark half of this planet. He was a scavenger. He dug through the garbage of the slums to find scraps of metal to sell for food.
I took a deep breath, and immediately coughed.
The air here was thick with a pale green fog. It smelled like rusted iron and rotten eggs. As a bioscience student, my brain screamed at me. This gas is toxic. I should be suffocating. There is no oxygen here.
But I wasn't suffocating. My chest rose and fell normally.
I remembered the purple blood I had coughed up earlier. Suddenly, a biology lesson clicked in my head. Back on Earth, horseshoe crabs have blue blood because they use copper to carry oxygen through their bodies, instead of iron.
My blood is violet, I realized, staring at a dried purple stain on my sleeve. The humans on this planet have evolved. Our biology completely changed to breathe this green gas instead of oxygen. That's amazing... and terrifying.
I used the wall to push myself up. My legs shook. Arthur's body was severely malnourished. If I didn't find warmth and food soon, my "second life" was going to end in a few hours.
I peeked out of the alleyway.
The street looked exactly like a movie set for a horror film set in the 1800s. The road was made of uneven, slippery cobblestones. Tall, jagged buildings made of black stone and iron pipes leaned over the street, looking like they might collapse at any moment. Thick iron pipes crawled up the walls, hissing and spitting out bursts of white steam.
The only light came from old-fashioned gas lamps attached to the walls. But the fire inside them wasn't orange. It was a cold, eerie blue.
People were walking quickly down the street. They all wore heavy dark coats, thick scarves, and top hats or flat caps. No one smiled. No one talked. They kept their heads down, rushing through the green fog like they were afraid of the shadows.
Nobody looked at the giant, swirling violet "Eye" in the sky. It was just a normal part of their miserable lives.
I stepped out of the alley and joined the crowd, keeping my head down just like them. Arthur's memories told me I had a "home" not too far from here. It was a cramped basement under a ruined clockwork factory.
As I walked, I heard the heavy, rhythmic sound of metal hitting stone. Clack. Clack. Clack.
The crowd around me suddenly parted. People pressed themselves against the dirty walls, looking at the ground in fear. I quickly did the same, hiding behind a large wooden barrel.
Walking down the center of the street were three men. They wore pristine white trench coats with silver armor plating on their shoulders. They wore wide-brimmed hats, and their faces were covered by silver masks shaped like crying angels.
The Church Inquisitors, Arthur's memory supplied. They were the police, the judges, and the executioners of this world. They came from the Light Side of the planet to hunt down "Heretics" in the slums.
One of the Inquisitors stopped. He looked at a homeless man curled up on the sidewalk. The homeless man was shivering violently, dying of the cold.
"Please, my Lord," the homeless man begged, reaching out a shaking hand. "A blessing of warmth? Just a little Grace?"
The Inquisitor looked down at him through his silver mask. He didn't speak. Instead, he raised his hand.
I watched closely, my modern brain trying to analyze what happened next. The Inquisitor didn't chant a magic spell. He didn't use a wand. He just snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, the air around the Inquisitor's hand blurred. It looked exactly like the heat waves you see above a hot grill in the summer. A second later, a bright, crackling orange flame burst from his empty palm.
The people in the street gasped, whispering prayers to the "Eye in the Sky" for witnessing a miracle.
But I didn't see a miracle.
I saw physics.
The Inquisitor wasn't creating fire out of nowhere. I could see the frost on the ground around his boots melting instantly. He was pulling thermal energy from the environment and compressing it into his hand. It was rapid, violent thermodynamics.
The Inquisitor casually tossed the fireball at a pile of trash near the homeless man. The garbage caught fire, providing a small, smoky source of heat. The Inquisitor turned and continued walking without a word.
They call it magic, I thought, my heart beating faster. They call it 'The Grace' of their god. But it's just energy manipulation. They are controlling the laws of physics with their bodies.
If the Church controlled the people by pretending physics was a religion, then knowledge was the most dangerous weapon in this world. And I was the only person here who knew the actual science.
I waited until the Inquisitors were gone before I stepped out from behind the barrel. I was freezing, starving, and weak, but for the first time since waking up, I felt a spark of hope.
I pulled Arthur's ragged coat tighter around my shoulders and hurried down the dark street. I needed to get to my basement, lock the door, and figure out exactly what my new body could do.