[POV Ryan First-Person] [Tense: Present]
07:00 a.m. – Murdock's Forge, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
The forge door groans when I push it, like it already judges me.
Heat slams into my face. Coal smoke, iron, sweat. Hammers ring somewhere deeper in, steady as a metronome.
I step inside and shut the chill out.
"No loitering in the doorway. Either come in or get out."
The voice hits first. Rough, amused. Then the dwarf steps out from behind a glowing forge like he grew from the stone itself.
Stocky. Shoulders like boulders. Beard a red waterfall braided with tiny metal rings that click when he moves. Soot streaks his cheeks, but his eyes are sharp and bright.
I lift both hands.
"Oh. I'm sorry, master smith."
He snorts.
"Master, is it? Your tongue's polished, lad. What do you want from Murdock's Forge?"
"My name is Ryan."
"I'm Murdock."
I pull the notebook from my satchel and flip to the pen sketches.
"I want to make this."
I lay the page on the nearest workbench, away from the stray sparks.
He wipes his hands on his leather apron and leans over the drawing, beard rings chiming.
"What in the hells is that thing?"
"A pen. A metal nib. The tip here does the writing."
He traces the split nib with one thick finger, careful despite the size of his hand.
"Thin as a hair, that slit. You want ink to run through it?"
"That's the idea. You dip it in ink, it holds a little, then it flows onto paper. Smoother than quills. Stronger too. First, I need twenty nibs."
"Ha. A tool for scribes." His mouth twists. "You walked into a war‑smith's hall asking for toys for ink‑fingers."
"Tools for a new idea," I counter. "A new idea that can make better books. A new idea that can improve productivity. When you need to send a letter to someone, using this will make writing easier, faster, and less messy."
That makes his eyes narrow in a different way.
"Idea, eh."
He taps the page again.
"Even if I humor you, this is flea‑sized work. Iron doesn't like to be that thin. It's more difficult than making a sword from straight iron. Your pen, which needs to be bent into your desired shape and made in numbers, is too delicate a task. If it's possible at all, only a small number can be made. You ask for twenty cuts in the time I'd make one knife."
"Then we don't hammer it." I slide the notebook closer and sketch a quick rectangle and a die. "We punch it. Flat sheet first. Cut out the shape with a stamp. Fold along lines. Use a jig to hold it while we pinch the slit."
Murdock watches my hand move, not the drawing.
"You talk like some crazy magicians, not a dirt‑road merchant."
"I have an idea, and I need to build my own business."
"Business? That's not my business, and it does nothing to help me build war machines."
"I can help you with war machines." I point at his furnace. "Right now, you can make good blades. No doubt. But to make my pen nibs, you'll have to go beyond good."
His eyes narrow. "Beyond good how?"
"Those nibs are thin as a breath," I say. "If the iron is dirty too much slag, too many bad bits inside it will crack when we hammer it flat, or chip when it bends. To get iron that pure, you need a hotter, steadier fire and a furnace that holds its heat better."
I tap the sketch again, then gesture at his bloomery.
"You already work iron from ore. I'm not insulting you. But I can help you push the furnace further. Stronger bellows. Better shape. A way to drain slag more cleanly. If we can make iron clean and even enough to survive as a hair‑thin sheet for my nibs, then that same purity and control will make your sword‑iron tougher and sharper too."
His beard shifts with a slow grin. "You say fussing over toy tips will give me better war‑iron."
"Exactly," I say. "Once you learn to shape extra‑thin iron without burning or breaking it, you can make finer chisels, files, and gauges. With those, you can test and work your blooms better drive out more slag, shape your edges more precisely, control your hardening by color instead of guessing. The same furnace that can make my tiny nibs," I tap the page, "can make your blades harder to break and longer to dull."
He goes quiet. The hammers in the back beat time while he stares at the drawing.
"So," he mutters at last, "a mad little ink‑tooth that forces me to build a better fire."
"A better fire for your war," I say. "I get nibs. You get stronger swords."
"We can lengthen your furnace a little," I add. "Give the iron more time in the hottest part of the fire. Put the air hole lower and stronger, so the heart of the flame is where the iron sits. And we can run the air through hot stone first, so it enters already heated. More heat, less waste. Cleaner iron."
"Hot enough to soften good iron into swords and hammers." His beard shifts with a grin. "You think you can judge my fire better than I can?"
"I think I can help you. Smaller work. Finer tools. If we pull this off, you're the only smith in Frosthaven making these." I tap the nib again. "Once you master work this small, you can make sharper chisels, finer files, better gauges. That lets you purify your iron further and shape your blades more precisely. That'll make your swords the most durable you've ever seen."
He stares at the page a long moment, the hammer chorus filling the gap.
At last, he grunts.
"Show me the way. On scrap. No charge for broken junk. If your idea wastes my good iron, we're done."
A grin tugs my mouth up.
"Deal."
He barks a laugh, loud as an anvil strike.
"Fine. Get over here, then."
He waves me toward the heart of the furnace, where metal glows and sparks jump like fireflies.
I've already set Murdock in motion to get ready for a new smelting furnace and a metal‑nib die, but before we start, I need to really dig into how we built them back in my world.
---
10:00 a.m. - At Marketplace, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
Frosthaven's morning breathes around me.
I step out from the lane of smithies into the open market and sound hits first—voices, carts, the crack of someone dropping a crate. Then smell. Fresh bread, onions, cheap tallow, a hint of river fish under everything.
I let myself drift with the current of bodies. Cloaks brush my sleeves, baskets bump my thighs. Kids zigzag between legs, chasing each other with carved wooden swords. Somewhere behind me the hammers of Murdock's row still pound, steady as a heartbeat.
Furnace shapes crowd my head taller shaft, hotter heart, slag tap at the base but they're half‑formed ghosts. I need more data. Chemistry, airflow numbers, not just "vibe of a blast furnace."
"HOT LOAVES! FRESH!" a baker bellows, arm deep in a stack of brown bread.
"Spiced lamb! No rot, no bugs!" another hollers from a grill, grease hissing as it hits coals.
My stomach grumbles. My tongue already doubts the flavor.
A shout cuts across the noise.
Not market‑bark. Rawer.
"FLEE, FOOLS!"
The word rips through the chatter. Heads turn like flowers tracking the sun.
I follow their gaze.
He stands in the loose space where two alleys kiss the square. Black robes hang off him in torn strips, stained with old mud and something darker. Bare feet on cold stone. Hair a tangled grey mane. Eyes… wide, too bright, like he never learned how to blink.
He throws his arms up at the pale morning sky.
"When night falls, the demons will come!" His voice scrapes like rusted metal on stone. "THEY WILL SUCK THE BLOOD AND FLESH OF THE NIGHT!"
People draw back a step without meaning to. A woman pulls her child behind her skirt. A fruit seller mutters a curse, fingers tightening around an apple.
"The land will drown in darkness that WORSHIPS THE RED MOON!" Spit flies from his mouth. "GREEDY NOBLES, CORRUPT PRIESTS, WAR‑LOVING KINGS—NONE SHALL ESCAPE! ALL WILL PERISH!"
Red Moon.
My spine tightens. Memory drops a cold weight in my gut blood‑colored light over the road, Snowball's antlers glowing, that wrong feeling under my skin like ants.
Sunlight owns the sky right now. Two moons hang pale above everything. Still, a few people glance up, like they expect a red eye to blink open through the clouds.
"Shut your cursed mouth, old crow," someone near the front snaps. "Kids don't sleep as is with that thing overhead."
The robed man jabs a shaking finger at him.
"You fatten your belly while the BLOOD EYE OPENS! You drink and rut and hoard while its children fall like embers! You will feed them FIRST!"
Great.
Public apocalyptic rant, episode one.
Part of me wants to sit on a barrel and wait for the inevitable "Press F to interact" prompt.
Metal clinks. A pair of city guards push through the ring stag emblem on armor, mail glinting. One carries a short spear, the other a baton and a length of cord.
"Back," the spear‑guard barks, sweeping his weapon sideways to clear space. "Give him room."
The crowd peels away, a reluctant tide.
The baton‑guard steps in close.
"You again." His jaw works. "You were warned from the square last week. By order of Frosthaven's council, cease this disturbance."
The robed man laughs. It sounds broken.
"Arrest my throat, little stag. The sky still speaks."
He hurls his words over the guard's shoulder, straight into the faces watching.
"YOU THINK STONE WALLS SAVE YOU? WHEN THE RED MOON SWELLS, YOUR CITY IS A LANTERN FOR FLIES! ITS FLESH WILL FALL, ITS CHILDREN WILL CRAWL, AND THEY WILL EAT—"
The baton snaps across his wrist. He gasps but doesn't stop.
"—YOUR—SOUL—"
"Bind him," the spear‑guard growls.
They move with practiced efficiency. Baton‑guard catches the man's arms, wrenches them behind his back. The other wraps the cord around his wrists, quick loops, hard knots.
The robed man thrashes, but he's more scarecrow than threat.
The baton jams into his ribs. Air whooshes out of him. His voice crumples to a hoarse mutter.
"Enough." The spear‑guard's tone is stone. "You disturb the peace, you spend a night in the cells. The inquisitor can talk to you about demons in the morning."
They start to drag him away.
He twists his head, eyes sweeping the ring. Madness, sure. Under it, something that looks like real fear.
"The rivers will dry," he wheezes. "The dead will WALK. Blood will be law and greed its tax. RUN, LITTLE ANTS, RUN—"
The baton clips him again. His words fall into a ragged cough.
Someone laughs, brittle.
"Another void‑touched beggar."
"Should toss him outside the walls on Redwatch," a butcher mutters, wiping a knife. "Let him yell at the sky out there."
The crowd melts back to commerce. Coins clink, voices rise, like someone unpaused a busy soundtrack.
I stand where I am, arms folded over my chest, watching the guards haul the man toward a side street until the black rags vanish behind stone.
"For fuck's sake," I breathe.
Tutorial town, check. Doomsayer NPC, check. Apocalypse teaser, check.
Either he's just a brain chewed up by too much war and not enough food… or he saw something real, and it hit his sanity hard.
I rub the back of my neck. My fingers come away damp.
"This isn't what I came here for," I mutter.
I came here to build my own business empire, get some quality of life, and find a way to go home. Not cosmic horror patch notes.
Money first, furnace second, if I want to start a business.
I drag my focus back, piece by piece. Tall stack, preheated air, maybe charcoal over raw wood, some way to tap slag. I know enough to know I don't know enough. I need schematics, process, examples.
Which Frosthaven absolutely doesn't stock in the "friendly neighborhood blast furnace" aisle.
So I need to go back into my mystery domain and use my internet to find something.
"But how?"
I still don't know how to get back there. "Sigh."
The Adventurer's Guild rises in my mind's eye—noise, contracts, information pinned to walls. Yesterday I bounced off it like a coward.
"Okay. Today I have another task I need to do put a little money in my empty pocket."
I turn away from the square and cut down a side street, boots slapping damp stone. Frostlight Square's central pillar peeks over the roofs ahead, and beside it, the hulking timber shell of the guildhall comes into view, sword‑and‑staff sign swinging over the door.
---
10:30 a.m. - At Adventurer's Guild, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
The guildhall looms bigger up close.
Same sword‑and‑staff sign, same wooden bulk, but the roar behind the walls sounds… throttled. Less tavern brawl, more busy restaurant.
I roll my shoulders.
"Round 2," I mutter, and shove the door.
Warm air hits. Sweat, leather, metal oil, old parchment. Lanterns hang in rows under dark beams, washing everything in yellow. Benches crowd the floor. Armor clinks, dice rattle, someone laughs too loud over a mug.
Not as packed as yesterday. I can breathe.
A long counter runs along the far wall, screens of latticework behind it. Ledgers, ink pots, stacks of stamped papers. A woman in a green tabard looks up as I approach, quill already pinched between ink‑stained fingers.
"Welcome to Frosthaven's Adventurer Hall. Business?"
"I want to register as an adventurer."
Her mouth twitches.
"Ambition at this hour." She flips a ledger open. "Name."
"Ryan Mercer."
The quill scratches. "Origin?"
"West. Near the… Azure Sea."
Her eyes flick once to my clothes, then my belt. No weapon.
"Trade or skill. What can you do in a fight?"
My mouth runs before my brain engages.
"Quantum Nexus of Infinite Probabilistic Multiversal Aeonic Continuum Convergence Algorithm for Absolute Chrono‑Singular Fate Determination."
The quill stops dead.
She looks up. Slow.
"…What."
Heat floods my face.
"Cough." I clear my throat. "Write it as 'American Martial Arts.'"
"American." Her tongue wrestles with the syllables. "Is that sword, spear, or spell?"
"Long‑range. Think… bow arts."
(Ahhh! What the fuck did I just say.)
"Archery." She nods, satisfied, and writes. "Any proof of past rank?"
"First time."
"Then Rank F until you show results."
She tears a thin strip of parchment, stamps it with a stag over crossed blades, and slides it over.
"Token for now. Bring it when you claim rewards or take tests for E‑rank."
I tuck the strip into my pocket, heartbeat doing a weird little skip. Tutorial complete.
Achievement unlocked:Legally Allowed To Die For Pocket Change.
I turn.
"Tsk. That boy wasted my time," the clerk mutters, but I don't turn around.
Sera stands in front of the quest board, arms folded, hood shadowing her face. Her eyes move over the papers like she can read them twice at once.
I drift up beside her.
"How'd it go?"
"Done." She doesn't look away from the board. "Rank F swordsman."
"Congrats. Party up on something easy? Slimes, monsters, adventures?"
"No."
She finally glances at me. Her stare pins harder than any spear.
"I walk my path, commoner. You walk yours."
"We share a room," I point out. "At least we need to know each other better."
"Uh huh. You mutter to yourself and hide strange tools." Her gaze flicks to my face. "You're more secretive than most cutthroats."
"That's profiling."
"Live long enough, you learn to profile or you die."
She plucks a sheet from the board, quick as a thief's hand.
"I will not drag you into my business." The paper disappears into her cloak. "Do not follow me."
And she's already striding for the door.
"Want me to at least watch your back out there?"
Her answer floats over her shoulder.
"'We'll get through this, together'? Save that line for someone who cannot hold a blade."
The door thuds behind her.
I stand there with my shiny Rank F and no party.
The board in front of me is a wall of ink squiggles. Columns, stamps, little symbols, words I can't read—total gibberish.
I squint harder, like the alphabet will suddenly install.
"I can only read languages from Earth," I mutter. "Great."
"You look like a man staring at the Avarnith language for the first time."
The voice at my elbow is bright, amused.
I turn. Broad‑shouldered guy, maybe late twenties, scar on his chin, leather armor scarred but well kept. Short sword at his hip, easy grin on his face.
"So the language's called 'Avarnith,' got it. Sorry, I'm not a local here."
He barks a laugh.
"I'm Gin, Rank C adventurer. My crew's heading for a fresh mark outside the old mining stretch. Unmapped tunnels, bonus pay for first survey. We could use another bowman."
His eyes drop to my hands. No calluses. No bow.
"Or just someone keen to learn. At the very least, we'll have an extra pair of hands to haul our loot."
Unexplored dungeon. High risk, high return. Maybe a lot of loot.
My stomach tightens, not entirely from fear.
"What's the cut?" I ask.
"Equal shares. Aside from guild tithe and any prior claims. We leave at dusk."
I stick my hand out before I overthink it.
(You're doing this for money, right, Ryan?)
I smile innocently.
"I'm in."
---
[POV Ryan Third-Person]
06:30 p.m. - At Dungeon Entrance, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
The evening air is thick with tension as Ryan's small party of four gathers at the dungeon's entrance—a jagged maw of stone yawning open at the foot of the mountains outside Frosthaven. Ryan shifts the weight of his borrowed pack, his fingers tightening around the straps. Without a proper weapon, he has volunteered as a scavenger—a glorified porter, really—but he tells himself it will be a valuable learning experience.
(If I'm going to survive in this world, I need to see how adventurers operate.)
He swallows his unease.
The party consists of:
- Gin, a stern swordsman serving as their leader
- Barden, a burly shielder with a silent demeanor
- Lyss, a quick‑footed scout with keen eyes
- Ryan, the outsider tagging along.
The dungeon's interior swallows them whole. Torchlight flickers against the damp stone walls, casting elongated shadows that dance like restless spirits. The air smells of stale earth and something metallic—blood, perhaps, or the faintest hint of corroded iron.
Gin plants a boot on a rock and tightens the strap of his gauntlet.
"Last check. Rope, oil, chalk, rations. Ryan, you haul. Stay behind Barden's shield, don't rush ahead, don't play hero."
He grins, but his eyes weigh Ryan like a ledger entry.
Barden adjusts the slab of metal on his arm, a door‑sized shield scarred with old impacts. Thick neck, thicker forearms, beard braided with copper rings. He looks Ryan over once.
"Pack's heavy enough. Keep up and you'll be fine."
Lyss flicks a pebble into the dark and listens for the echo that never comes. Short hair, hard jaw, knives strapped every place cloth can hide metal. Her stare hooks Ryan and holds.
"Equal shares," she reminds Gin without looking away from him. "Even for porters. Your word."
Gin's hand lands on her shoulder.
"My word."
(Yeah. Equal shares. Tutorial dungeon. No problem.)
Ryan swallows, hitching the straps higher.
(If I'm just carrying bags, I prefer "logistics specialist" over "meat shield.")
They pass under the stone lip.
The light of Frosthaven dies behind them, and the dungeon swallows the world.
---
06:50 p.m. - At Secret Entry, Dungeon, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
The air turns thick and damp, heavy with old earth and iron. Their torch throws long, jagged shadows that lurch with each step.
Skittering claws break the silence first.
Eight glassy eyes catch the fire. A spider bigger than a dog clings to the wall, its body a sack of hair and chitin.
Ryan jerks back.
"NOPE."
Gin is already moving, blade angling up in a clean, practiced arc. The spider drops; steel opens its belly. Black gore steams on the stone.
"Watch the ceiling," Gin warns. "They nest in cracks."
Barden steps up, shield raised. A second spider lands on the metal with a wet thump and scrabbles. Barden twists, pins it to the wall, crushes. Legs twitch once, then hang still.
Lyss's knife whistles past Ryan's ear and buries in a smaller one Ryan doesn't even see.
"Keep your head level," she snaps. "You stare at the floor, they drop on your neck."
Ryan forces his gaze to a middle line, heart thudding.
(So this is how adventurers operate. Efficient. Terrifying. Zero OSHA.)
Shrieking bats swarm a few tunnels later, wings buffeting faces and torchfire. Gin drags Ryan down behind Barden's shield. Lyss whirls, blades flashing, knocking bodies from the air. They leave a carpet of twitching leather on the stones.
A lone goblin tries an ambush after that, leaping from a shadowed alcove with a rusty spear.
Barden meets it with the shield's edge. Bone cracks.
Ryan stares at the crumpled body a half second too long.
Gin's voice drifts back.
"First corpse?"
Ryan pulls his eyes away.
"Y‑Yeah."
(Technically the second since I landed in this world.)
"Good. Means you still lived."
They push deeper.
---
07:00 p.m. - At Three Paths, Dungeon, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
A low rumble brushes Ryan's bones.
Not sound. Memory.
Fog thickness, Drakensvale armor folding like tin, a dinosaur taller than trees. The Umbrathorax—that thing could swallow a bus like a snack.
His fingertips tingle.
(That thing isn't here.)
The tunnel forks ahead: three mouths of darkness.
Gin lifts the torch high.
"Left slopes down. Right pinches. Center breathes cold."
Lyss lifts a hand to the draft from the middle path, nostrils flaring.
"Deeper air. Old air. That's where the good things hide."
"Or the things that eat C‑ranks," Barden rumbles.
They argue in clipped bursts.
"Right, a choke point."
"Left, will flood if there's a spring."
"Straight, then. We see what's worth dying for."
Ryan leans against the wall. He lets their voices bounce past him.
(You three are the pros. I'm just here to pick up shiny rocks and not die.)
They choose the center.
---
07:10 p.m. - At Hall of Star Crystal, Center Path, Dungeon, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
The tunnel widens into a cavern.
Ryan's breath catches.
Crystals erupt from floor and walls, long spears and jagged fans, all glowing with a silver‑green light that pulses like a slow heartbeat. The cave swims in color, reflections shattering across wet stone, shadows bending in soft ripples.
He steps forward, eyes wide.
"It's… like someone grew LEDs out of quartz."
Gin walks to the nearest cluster, gloved hand hovering, not quite touching.
"These aren't in any report."
Lyss's face softens, just for a moment, as the light washes across her skin.
"Star crystals. Glowing. This… this is different."
Barden wedges a knife point into a smaller shard and pries it loose. It comes free with a clear chime.
The thing in his palm hums faintly.
Lyss stares.
"That one piece's worth a month's pay."
Gin breathes out through his nose, slow.
"A full vein changes lives."
Ryan feels the shift. The air grows tighter than the tunnel.
He blurts out, "We, uh, file this with the Guild, yeah? That's what a survey's for."
Lyss's gaze flicks to him.
"Yeah. Guild takes tithe. Nobles take rights. We get crumbs."
Ryan tunes them out and goes on stuffing crystals into the sacks.
Gin rolls the crystal in his palm, eyes gone distant.
"Three shares split better than four."
Barden's jaw tightens.
"Hey. Jokes about killing the F‑rank new guy in the sketchy cave are in very poor taste, just for the record."
Gin's grin snaps back into place.
"Relax. We're not wasting a good porter. Yet."
They pocket a few loose shards, mark the walls with chalk, and pull back to the fork.
This time they take the left path.
---
07:40 p.m. - At Deep Point, Dungeon, Frosthaven, Aurelthorn (16 September 2025)
The slope drags them down, stone slick under boots. The torchlight begins to feel thin, swallowed by something heavier than darkness.
Ryan tosses a stone ahead.
No clatter.
The tunnel spills out onto a ledge.
The world ends.
A gulf yawns before them, a hole punched through the mountain with no bottom, no walls he can see, only a vertical ocean of black that eats the torchlight and gives nothing back. Even sound dies; their breathing feels too loud.
Cold curls off the void, not the honest cold of ice, but a hollow chill that smells of nothing at all.
Ryan edges closer, belly tight.
"Okay, that's not a normal pit."
Lyss crouches, peering down.
"Throw another."
Barden tosses a larger rock. They listen.
Silence.
Gin shrugs the pack off his shoulders.
"We rest here. Eat, drink, decide how to mark this for the map."
Ryan sets his own load down, rolling his shoulders with a groan.
"New rule," he mutters. "In games, pits like that always mean instant death. Or bosses. Or both."
Barden's voice comes from near the edge.
"Oi, Mercer. Come here. Something's moving down there."
Curiosity hooks Ryan, drags him forward. He steps to Barden's side, squinting into the black.
"I don't see—"
A hand slams between his shoulder blades.
The world drops away.
His stomach lurches into his throat. The torchlight whips past, a shrinking ring above. For a blinking instant he hangs in the air, weightless, and three faces frame the circle of light.
Gin's mouth set in a hard line.
Lyss clutching his pack, knuckles white.
Barden looking anywhere but down.
Ryan's voice tears out of him.
"GIN! WHAT THE FU—"
Rock hits him first across the ribs, folding his chest in. Bones snap, organs mash. Before the pain can even peak, his body knits, ribs sliding back into place, skin smoothing.
He hits another outcrop shoulder‑first. The joint explodes. Nerves scream. Flesh crawls, reforms, sinew rethreads.
"AAAGHHHH!"
The fall refuses to end.
Stone breaks legs. Darkness swallows him. Skull cracks. Spine shatters. Every time, something unseen reaches into him and forces him whole again, pushing meat and bone into proper shapes only for gravity to wreck them anew.
No air in his lungs long enough to breathe, but enough to feel fire lick every nerve.
(STOP. STOP. PLEASE STOP.)
The rocks vanish.
He drops into pure night.
There is no up, no down, no wind, no weight. Just a slow sinking through a void thicker than water, colder than vacuum. The darkness around him moves, presses, seeps through skin, fingers, mouth, eyes.
Flesh loosens.
He feels himself pulled apart in strands, cells unhooking, dissolving into the black. Each piece that melts triggers a frantic surge from the Authority lodged in his soul. Safe from Wounds drags new matter out of nothing, rebuilding muscle, skin, bone.
The Abyss drinks it.
He regrows.
It drinks again.
Over and over.
Pain blooms, a constant white roar, no gap, no breath, no mercy. Time loses edges. Thoughts smear.
The Space House window, black hole humming beyond the glass.
The mail form floats in his mind's eye.
"Safe from Wounds."
The words twist.
Keep breaking.
Pain forever.
Something deeper than bone frays. Each regeneration claws his soul back to the surface, each dissolution drags it under. The tug‑of‑war grinds him down, thinner and thinner, until there is almost nothing left to grip.
He reaches for anger, for logic, for a joke.
Nothing answers.
(So tired.)
His fluid body brushes stone once, near the ledge far above, but the suffering does not stop.
The Authority still strains every time, tries to pull a body together around an empty center.
At last, the pain goes out like a candle in rain.
The Abyss closes over the last, fading echo of Ryan Mercer and swallows it whole.
---
[POV Ryan First-Person]
10:00 p.m. – Ryan's House (Time frozen 09 September 2025)
Blank ceiling. Hairline crack over the smoke alarm. The faint hum of the fridge from the kitchen.
I jerk awake on my back.
My body moves before my head comes online.
Feet swing down. Carpet under my toes. I stand, slow, like a puppet at the end of a worn string, and walk out of the bedroom.
The living room swims into view. Couch. Coffee table. TV glow off the black window that looks into forever.
The remote's in my hand without me remembering picking it up.
Click.
«…AND HE GAVE ME HIS POWERS. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?»
Laughter track explodes from the speakers, canned and bright. Protagonist pulls some stupid godface—an old favorite bit. Usually I at least smirk.
I drop onto the sofa. Stare.
The joke rolls. Another gag, more fake laughter, studio clapping. The sound bounces off the walls, too loud in a house that never breathes.
My chest doesn't move.
No smile. No thought. Just light on my face.
Something slams into me.
Like a freight train straight through the sternum. Air rips into my lungs in a ragged gasp. Every nerve lights up with old pain—shattered ribs, screaming joints, meat tearing on stone, the cold that isn't temperature.
The pit. The fall. The Abyss chewing me molecule by molecule.
A howl tears out of my throat.
"FUUUUUCK!"
I double over, fists in my hair, forehead almost to my knees.
"FUCK YOU! YOU—"
The word shreds itself into noise. My voice scrapes raw. The TV keeps laughing at me.
I lunge, stab the power button.
Silence slams down.
My heartbeat hammers in the dark room. In the window, the black hole is gone.
Outside the glass, a spiral of colors churns—violet, bruise‑blue, rust‑red veins wrapping a swollen orb that twitches, like something alive in a jar. Thin threads of light stretch off it into the void, feelers tasting for me.
"You!!!"
My finger jabs at the glass.
"You watched. You let that happen. Enjoy the show, you cosmic piece of shit?"
I thought falling would be the worst part, but what I just went through was a 100 times worse.
I turn away before I punch through that screen.
Back to the bedroom.
The physical pain is gone, leaving only emotional pain and a terrifying afterimage. I realize I must have crawled back here on my hands and knees.
I don't even know why I was in the living room in the first place; it's like that every time before I fully wake up, but this time I didn't notice myself at all.
The computer screen glows on the desk. Of course it's already awake.
Mail window open.
```Mail Form
Job Application: Reality Parameters
Status: Update Scripts
Next Cycle Begins in: 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes
Submit To: [email protected]
Safety Protocols Available:
- Safe from Greed
- Safe from The Red Moon
- Safe from Nightmares of the Abyss
```
My hand lands on the mouse. Knuckles white.
Greed.
The word tastes like copper. Star crystals. Gin's hand on Lyss's shoulder. "Three shares split better than four."
My lip curls.
"Greedy."
"Hahahaha. I don't even know what those fucking crystals are worth. I just know I can earn more than that shit."
"I'll build an empire big enough to buy that shit a 1,000 times over—until your world drowns in pollution."
I tap the monitor where the letters float.
"Good. Keep it. Let them choke on it."
The other two lines burn brighter in my eyes.
The Red Moon. That crawling static under my skin whenever I tilt my head up in Veythralis, the way beasts jitter and humans flinch. And the Abyss—
"I don't know what that motherfucking thing even is, but if it's hostile and I can only lock in safety for one person, I'm choosing me. The rest of the life on Veythralis can fuck off, I don't care."
(Never again.)
The laugh that comes out of me doesn't sound right. Low. Crooked. It scrapes up from somewhere the Abyss didn't eat.
"Safe from Nightmares of the Abyss." — CHECK
I whisper, "Yeah. You had your turn."
Click.
The checkbox pulses, tiny digital heartbeat.
"Safe from The Red Moon." — CHECK
Images flash—the crazy man at the marketplace yelling about the Red Moon.
"Your cursed light doesn't touch me anymore."
Click.
Greed stays naked. Unchecked. I leave it on the table like a knife.
"Run your world on love, they say." My fingers drum on the desk.
"FUNNY. LOVE MAKES YOU A FOOL UNTIL YOU GET STABBED IN THE BACK. GREED MAKES YOU PUSH SOMEONE ELSE INTO THE DARK."
"YEAH, CLIMB AS HIGH AS YOU WANT, ALL OF YOU, STAND ON A MOUNTAIN OF BODIES, I'LL STILL TAKE EVERYTHING—EVEN IF YOU'RE WIPED OUT FROM THIS WORLD, YOU'LL REMEMBER ME WHETHER YOU'RE LIVING OR ROTTING."
"BACK IN MY WORLD, PEOPLE CLUTCH TO THE CRUEL SHIT AND FORGET THE GOOD. HUH. WHAT A FUCKING COMEDY."
"SO THAT'S IT, YOU WANT ME TO TURN INTO THE VILLAIN."
After I swear myself empty, I actually feel a little calmer.
Before I crush that mouse with my grip, I force my hand to relax.
"I'll teach you why you shouldn't mess with the silent nerd sitting at the front of the classroom," I breathe. "Ahhh, that reminds me of school. One of the black memories."
The cursor stops before it reaches SUBMIT.
"This time," I murmur, "there are things I want to do before I go back to that world."
I smile like a villain.