"100… 200… 300…"
Elias counted slowly, his smile growing with each crisp note. He had been walking along the road earlier when he noticed the wallet lying near the curb. Normally, he wasn't the type to pick up things that didn't belong to him, but his situation was desperate. He had waited there for an hour to see if anyone would claim it. No one did.
So now, it was his.
"Total, 1200," he muttered. "That covers two months' rent."
A sharp knock at the door snapped him back to reality. He shoved the wallet under the table and stood. An old man waited outside—wrinkled skin, gray hair, and a back bent slightly forward. This was Larry, his landlord, nicknamed "Old Astronaut." He only appeared once a month to collect rent, then vanished.
"Elias," Larry said, his voice flat. "You're ten days late."
Elias nodded, counted out the rent, and handed it over. Larry took the money without another word and disappeared into the hall.
The door closed. Elias leaned against it, exhaling. Six hundred left. He returned to the table and picked up the wallet. The leather felt thicker than it should have. He pressed along the lining until he felt it—a narrow slit. Inside was not money, but a thin shard of dark stone. Smooth. Reflective. Sharp.
As he pulled it free, a searing pain shot through his thumb.
He cried out and dropped the wallet. Blood welled instantly—dark and thick—but something else followed. Black smoke seeped from the wound, curling upward with the scent of dust and ozone.
"What…?"
Cold fire raced up his arm. The pain was unbearable, digging into his chest and his spine. The world blurred, the walls melting away like stretched rubber. Sound disappeared. Then light. Then weight.
---
He landed heavily on a hard floor.
Air burst from his lungs and his ribs flared with pain. He lay there wheezing, his mind muddled, as a chill crept up his back. When he finally opened his eyes, the ceiling above him was wrong. He hauled himself up, heart thudding. This was not his room.
The air was thick and stale. He saw pale walls, a table piled with ancient books, and a black iron lantern. He looked down at his own hand. There was no cut. Instead, a faint symbol glowed beneath the skin of his wrist: **An open hand, bound by thin black chains.** The mark slowly faded, dissolving into his skin until it vanished.
He stumbled backward, his heels striking the frame of a silver-rimmed mirror. He turned, and the breath died in his throat.
The face in the glass wasn't his. It was a boy in his late teens, pale as a ghost, with sharp cheekbones. But that wasn't the horror. A jagged, red canyon was carved across the man's throat.
The wound was deep—wide enough that he should have been spraying blood across the floorboards. In fact, he looked down and saw it: a dark, wide pool of crimson staining the wood beneath his feet.
"I'm... I'm dead?" Elias whispered, his voice a wet croak.
As soon as he spoke, a hot, searing itch ignited in his throat. Thin, silver-white threads began to stitch across the wound with a wet, squelching sound. Within seconds, the gaping hole closed, leaving only smooth, blemish-free skin.
Elias clutched his throat, then looked back at the floor. The pool of blood was moving. It didn't soak into the wood; instead, it began to sizzle. Wisps of thick black smoke rose from the floorboards, the crimson liquid evaporating rapidly as if it was being reclaimed by something unseen. In seconds, the floor was bone-dry. Not a single drop remained to prove he had been murdered.
"What the—"
The room swayed. **Memories** crashed into his mind, fast and brutal. The hunger of a student. Long hours in this room. Footsteps. A hand grabbing him from the darkness. This body belonged to someone named **Reinliar.**
He lunged for the window, desperate for air, but the handle wouldn't budge. He pressed his face to the pane. Silence. Absolute, heavy silence. The glass was unnaturally thick, cutting off the world like a tomb.
He looked up and froze. Hanging over a skyline of gothic spires and venting steam pipes was a moon that defied reason. It was bloated, filling half the horizon, glowing with a sickly, bruised blue light. Around its edges, a ring of deep crimson bled into the clouds.
This wasn't Earth.
Where am I? Who killed this boy?
He backed away from the window, his breath hitching in the tomb-like quiet. He was trapped in a soundproof box.
CREAK.
The sound was deafening. Elias bolted upright. The heavy oak door was swinging inward. Moonlight, blue and predatory, poured across the floorboards like spilled ink.
A black-gloved hand gripped the doorframe, followed by a tall, slender man in a wide-brimmed hat.
"Reinliar," the man said, his voice calm and terrifyingly certain. "You are saved."